Teacher, mentor and friend

Her name—at least to us students—was Mrs. Slansky. In many ways, she was the stereotypical high school English teacher, with her perfect cursive, her poofy hairdo and her bookish, seemingly out-of-touch demeanor.

And then there were the wall decorations. She had a set for every season and holiday, and when it was time for the old ones to come down and for the new ones to go up, she’d politely make her male students do all the work.

These decorations always struck us as somewhat odd. I mean, we were high-schoolers, not third-graders. But we all appreciated the extra effort—even male students who had to put up and take down the darned decorations every month. It showed us that Monica Slansky cared.

In some ways, I think she cared too much. As her beloved Wooster High School aged and changed from a rural school to an inner-city school over the years, it hurt her to see the school, in some ways, take a back seat to newer schools with more affluent students. But it didn’t diminish her love for Wooster one bit; she served the school every way she could, sitting on the Wooster Foundation and keeping tabs on 1331 E. Plumb Lane well after health problems forced her to retire in the mid-1990s.

She hated the fact that her health problems—muscular sclerosis and arteries so narrow that heart attacks weren’t a question of if, but when—took her away from her students. She loved us so much, and it showed. Volumes could be written about all the things she did for her students in the Washoe County School District. Heck, I’d fill up a volume or two all by myself.

I can speak for more students than myself when I say that we loved her, too. Many of us kept in touch with Mrs. Slansky after graduation, and we got to know this small woman a little better. We learned that she wasn’t out of touch at all; she knew far more about of our high school hijinks than she let on.

And although we grew to consider her a friend, I don’t think any of us dared call her Monica. She wouldn’t have minded; it just wouldn’t have seemed right. She’s Mrs. Slansky.

Some of us, Slansky’s former students, didn’t keep in touch as well as we wished that we had. That’s why the news of her June 21 death was so sad. It wasn’t that it was a surprise, really. She’d been battling major health problems for more than a decade. But some of us just kept putting off a visit, a letter, a phone call—and now it’s too late. We know that she forgives us, that she understands. But we’re sad because we missed a chance to talk to her one more time, to thank her one more time.

That’s why I chose to write this. More than any of my other teachers, she encouraged me to become a writer. And wherever she’s at—if there’s any order in the universe—she’s editing the heck out of this. If there are any grammatical errors, I know I’ll hear about them one day—but only after I get a great big hug.

Good-bye, Mrs. Slansky.