Wilburn King ~ My favorite teacher
By Claude Jones
Wilburn King changed my life. Mr. King was the first male teacher I had in school. My first five years were spent with female teachers, teaching all the subjects and acting as our monitors during recess. The sixth grade was the first time we had different teachers for different subjects.
My class was a war-baby class. We were born in 1947 after our fathers had come home from World War II. Our class numbered 105. The class before us had about 60 students and the class behind us had 80 students. We never had enough teachers, desks or books at Pontotoc [Mississippi] Elementary School. Our class and our teachers had to endure two classes of at least 40 students with 20 or so students stuck in a split-grade class with some students from the grade below us.
Our class was outstanding. We had a number of really smart kids. Many were gifted in athletics and had nice clothes. The town kids were blessed to have mothers who brought them to school in shiny cars or they walked from their nearby homes, while we county kids had to ride the dirty yellow school buses. The town mothers were “homeroom mothers” who on special days brought us cookies. They dressed in high-heel shoes and wore necklaces and matching earrings.
I felt inferior. I was a skinny kid, red haired with freckles and painfully shy. My stomach hurt everyday I had to go to school. I begged Mama to let me stay home. If I got sick at school Mama couldn't come and get me because the old trap of a car we drove wouldn't crank. My sister Linda would come over from the high school and tell me I was okay to stay at school and I guess I was.
I made a few friends who, like me, rode the bus, wore the same type jeans with iron-on patches and homemade shirts. We didn't care that we wore the jeans and shirts several days before they were washed.
I was not a good student. I made average grades. It seemed to me the rest of my class was much smarter and more capable than I was.
The sixth grade was destined to be a landmark in the life of our class. This was the first time we could participate in sports. We were an athletic class, and I could compete with my classmates at any sport. Mr. King was a legendary peewee girls’ coach. His team members stocked the Pontotoc High Girls Basketball teams that regularly went to state tournament and won the Pontotoc County and Little Ten Conference Tournaments.
Mr. King wasn’t a big man, but he was 6 feet tall, solidly built with broad shoulders, forearms that bulged with muscles and big strong hands. His voice was deep, his diction precise. He projected authority and confidence. He was scary to me and a lot of my classmates.
Mr. King began his science class by telling us what we would cover and learn in his class. He said he would not only teach us the theories of science, we would learn the practical application of science that affected our everyday lives.
He genuinely wanted to know what we already knew of science so he could know where to begin his teaching. He began to ask general knowledge questions of the class. Hands would shoot up and wave to catch his attention in attempts to be called on and answer the questions he asked. My hand stayed by my side; my shyness reigned.
As the questions became harder, fewer hands were raised and the enthusiastic waving ceased. Many answers were wrong, but Mr. King was careful to explain why the answers were wrong and tell the correct answers without embarrassing the student who had answered. I finally got the courage to raise my hand to answer a question when the others could not answer. I answered another question and then another as Mr. King kept asking the class questions.
Even though I had not done well in school during my first 5 years, I was a reader. Our weekly trips to town found me at the Pontotoc County Library reading anything I could get my hands on. Even though the sign behind the counter read, “limit 3 book checkout,” Miss Thompson and Mrs. Clement let me check out 10 or 12 at a time to take home to read. I had gained a lot of knowledge through my reading.
After Mr. King’s questioning, he told the class he would ask each student to submit 10 questions and he would make up his tests from the questions submitted by the students. He pointed at Bill Inzer and said, “I might take one question from Bill, and one from Betty, and one from Jimmy, and I surely will take 3 or 4 from Claude because he is so smart.”
I had never been called smart! No one had told me I was smart! Mr. King called me smart. I was a different student after being called smart.
That day Mr. King became my favorite teacher and will always remain my favorite teacher.
Claude Jones adds:
These critical times in so many children's lives are lost or missed or skewed because someone like Wilburn King wasn't there because he or she took a job selling insurance or managing a store to make enough money to properly care for their family because the State of Mississippi failed to pay teachers a decent salary.
It is my opinion everyone has a Wilburn King in their time and I hope in their future. I hope I am right. I have so many heroes in my life that took the time to care about a red haired country boy and helped to lift me and mold me and show me what was available outside of cotton rows and prejudice. I briefly mentioned Miss Thompson and Mrs. Clement of the Pontotoc County Library in my story. They shouldn't have let me check out all those books, it was against the rules. But they did and I gained tremendously from their breaking the rules and their confidence in me. How much I owe!
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