Saturday, March 18, 2023
Mrs. Lipson was my 3rd grade teacher. She was kind, encouraging, enthusiastic and energetic. She made learning fun and interesting and I will never forget some of the many things she taught me.
She taught me to love poetry. Choral reading of poems, complete with vocal inflections and gestures, was a regular activity. "The Elf and the Doormouse" was never read with more enthusiasm than it was in Mrs. Lipson's class.
We read about Pimwe, an indigenous boy who lived in the Amazon Jungle. We created a diorama of his village that helped to make it more real and more relatable.
She taught us our times tables. I was out sick for a week when we learned the 8s and 9s and I still have trouble with them, to this day.
We learned to love books. She had us take strips of colored paper, write the titles on them and post them on the bulletin board so they looked like books on a shelf. I wanted mine to be enormous, so I read as much as I could to make it so.
She helped us to create our own class newspaper. Mr. Lipson worked for The Times Union/Democrat & Chronicle and he took our articles and had them printed into a newspaper called, "The Lipson One-Day Special". We were so proud.
We wrote our own books, complete with a binding made from duct tape. Mine was "Jaguar John". I wrote that Jaguar John was "pondering" around the lake. She told me she didn't think that's what I meant, but I insisted that it was. :-)
I have so many wonderful memories of Mrs. Lipson and her 3rd grade class. I know that there are hundreds and hundreds of people whose lives she touched. I offer my condolences to her family and friends and want you to know how much she meant to me.
