Remembering a ‘Star Teacher’

Note: The following was authored by Stephen M. Baylor, M.D., Merion Station, Pa. Stephen was taught by the late Sister Helen Rose Newland at Corpus Christi High School in Galesburg, Ill.

Good teachers offer great benefits to students, so nearly everyone remembers and reveres their good teachers.

Sister Helen Rose Newland was a master teacher. She lived and worked for many years in Galesburg, Ill., where she taught Latin and English to students at Corpus Christi High School (CCHS), the local Catholic high school open to all denominations.

Sister Helen Rose was born in Indianapolis on April 9, 1911, one of eight children of Arthur Newland and Mary Ann Donohue Newland. Sister’s given name at birth was Helen Elizabeth Newland.

In 1927, she joined the Sisters of Providence, a religious community headquartered at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. In 1935, Sister made her “perpetual vows” in the community, thus becoming a fully-professed Sister. She died at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods on March 25, 1996.

(Note: The stated mission of the Sisters of Providence is to improve the lives of individuals through education, health care and spirituality, and to improve the well-being of the larger community through environmental awareness, social justice and related issues).

A ‘Lifelong’ Student

Sister Helen Rose was a lifelong student of the classics, including the Latin and Greek languages. During her formal years of education, she received a bachelor’s degree from Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College and a master’s degree from the University of Notre Dame.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Sister Helen Rose lived in the convent house of the Sisters of Providence, which was located on S. Prairie Street in Galesburg, just across the street from CCHS. She taught Latin and English at the school and she taught these and other subjects in Indiana at Holy Cross in Indianapolis and St. Ignatius in Lafayette. She also taught in Illinois at St. Marks, St. Angela and Our Lady of Sorrows in Chicago; and St. Athanasius and Marywood in Evanston, while also teaching at Marywood in Orange, Calif.

CCHS was a “diocesan” school, one whose administration was ultimately controlled by the local bishop, who resided in Peoria, Ill. In practice, during most of its history, CCHS was run by the Sisters of Providence. The Sisters provided the majority of the school’s teachers as well as its principal and they designed and implemented most of its curriculum.

CCHS was housed in an architecturally-striking but somewhat antiquated four-story building that was built in 1895 and stood at the corner of Prairie and Tomkins streets in Galesburg. From the outside, the building had a Victorian-era appearance. On the inside, the building was divided in a logical way into hallways, stairwells, bathrooms and various-sized classrooms. In contrast to the norm for public schools of that era, the building had separate entrances for boys and girls. In 1965, the building was judged to be outdated and was torn down.

A large number of people from Galesburg and nearby communities, particularly those of the Catholic faith, received their high school education at CCHS (grades 9 through 12). The memories of these students are undoubtedly etched with recollections of the building that housed the school, of their classmates, and of the teachers who labored to educate them. In the case of Sister Helen Rose, her influence on many students was extremely positive, even profound.

Indeed, during the years of Sister’s retirement, many of her former students made time for multiple calls to, or visits with her at the retirement home of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods.

Latin and English

At CCHS, and at the other schools where she taught, Sister Helen Rose lived and breathed the subjects of Latin and English — and did so at a high level. She undoubtedly gained her extraordinary mastery of these subjects through her own high school and college studies, through the continuing education courses that she took at institutions such as the University of Notre Dame and the University of Illinois, through her wide reading and studious application and through her own innate high intelligence.

She was also a scholar of the Greek language, although this was not a subject included in the CCHS curriculum. Regarding Greek, one of her students recalls her staying that she was currently reading the New Testament in the original Greek, finding it both challenging and spiritually rewarding.

Sister Helen Rose taught high school English and Latin at the introductory level to freshmen and/or sophomores and at an advance level to juniors and/or seniors. In these and other activities, she was a highly organized person. For example, she kept a “little black book,” that had notations about every good book that she had read during her life.

The English classes Sister taught included her analyses and chalkboard dissections of creative writing essays written by her students. Her advanced Latin class included poetic and other readings from sources such as Virgil’s Aeneid. Based on her long teaching experience, Sister knew exactly how to lead a novice student toward a useful understanding of the structure, grammar and vocabulary of English and toward a workable understanding of Latin.

The ‘Hallmarks’ of Teaching

Sister’s classroom teaching was characterized by two hallmarks. The first was “the handout.” A new student, after attending a couple of Sister’s classes, realized that the next class would likely begin with Sister distributing a one-to-two page handout, prepared in mimeograph form, that contained vocabulary lists and/or other material that she would discuss in class that day and that the student was expected to learn by the next class period.

In both English and Latin classes, these handouts emphasized the close connection between a great multitude of English words and their roots in the Latin language. For example, the words “docent” and “doctor,” derive from the Latin verb “docere,” meaning “to teach,” and the words “prince” and “principal,” derive from the Latin adjective “princeps,” meaning “first” or “chief.” Similarly, “fabrication” derives from “fabricare,” meaning “to construct,” “association” from “associare” (to unite), and “sonorous,” from “soncare” (to sound). The word “sound” itself of course derives from “sonare.”

Once a student had become aware of the many connections between English words and their Latin counterparts, it often became second-nature for the student, upon encountering an unfamiliar English word, to seek a dictionary and look up its “etymology,” its linguistic origin and history.

Having such etymological knowledge helps in understanding new words and recalling their meanings. Not surprisingly, Sister Helen Rose emphasized that it was both useful and enjoyable to have available a dictionary that included, not just the currently-accepted meaning(s) of a word, but something centrally-related to its linguistic history.

Sister’s second signature teaching method was her daily and energetic 45-minute class presentation (what might now be called a formal lecture). This presentation relied heavily on the material in that day’s handout. Any student who was unfamiliar with this material, or perhaps felt threatened by it, could follow most of the day’s lecture by simply looking at the handout while listening to Sister’s presentation. Sister often supplemented the material in the handout with clever analytic explanations, which she would write on the chalkboard at relevant times during her lectures.

One of her favorite instructional devices was to write a sample word on the board (usually a multi-syllable word), then break down the word into its component parts, identifying its linguistic stem and root meaning, plus noting any relevant prefixes and suffixes that modified its meaning in the particular case.

If Sister sensed that the class as a whole was becoming tired or had lost its focus (e.g., some students were looking out the window), she would immediately stop her presentation and instruct everyone to stand up and stretch — then sit down again and renew their attention.

At the end of a class, in the absence of unanswered questions, Sister would sweep out of the room in a decisive and dramatic fashion, similar to her mode of entry 50 minutes earlier.

Efficient and Memorable

Sister’s strong and highly-organized teaching style would undoubtedly be game for criticism by some modern observers. For example, some critics might say that a teacher should avoid the limelight, which Sister Helen Rose definitely did not do, thus allowing the students to become more active class participants.

According to this reasoning, interactive discussions among students will highlight the understandings of students of different backgrounds, thereby making the class material more engaging and memorable.

In the case of this writer, however, I found Sister’ didactic approached to be both highly efficient and memorable. At the beginning of my high school years, my knowledge of English grammar, creative writing and literature was rudimentary, and my knowledge of Latin was negligible. I found it reassuring that a strong mind and clear thinker was in charge, someone with a plan who knew what she was talking about and was forcefully leading the class.

Furthermore, neither I nor my classmates had any substantive knowledge of most of the topics discussed in Sister’s classes. As time went by, it struck me as remarkable, indeed thrilling, that a teacher might know her material so thoroughly that, should the occasion arise, she could continue her class presentation without notes and without missing a beat. Sister also encouraged, and was able to answer, all student questions in a clear and helpful manner, either during or after class.

Another salient characteristic of Sister’s teaching was the example she set for the adoption of useful life skills, such as being organized, prepared, responsible and accountable. Sister was the ultimate role model for these qualities, and she expected her students to evidence these qualities as well. For example, she was notorious for giving pop quizzes on the material in her handouts. It was also obvious to her students that she herself never wasted a minute of her time and that everyone was expected to give his or her best effort. For whatever reason, disciplinary problems did not arise in her classes.

Sister sometimes revealed the playful and humorous sides of her personality — but generally not during class itself. One student recalled that, prior to the beginning of a class early in the semester, she was summoned by Sister and was told, “Mary, please run up the window shades.” This “running joke,” was then repeated to this student often during the semester.

Student Memories

Another student recalled that, when “prom night” in springtime came around, it was customary for students to stop by briefly at the front porch of the convent house so that the nuns might greet the students and meet their dates. In one instance, a male student made his appearance, unexpectedly and nonchalantly smoking a cigarette. The next day Sister was heard to comment, “John stopped by last night exuding smoke and charm.”

Sister also had an instinctive awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of her individual students. One student remembers being called at short notice to meet with her at the end of a school day, which was an unsettling prospect. Sister proceeded to tell him in no uncertain terms that he was not working up to his academic potential and challenged him to get serious about his future.

The student recalls that this was the first time a teacher had made such a pointedly unenthusiastic evaluation of his academic performance. As a result, he began reading books of his own choosing and thinking about what to do after high school. By his senior year, he had applied to and been accepted for admission by a university of high standing in a nearby state.

Sister Helen Rose continued to teach in her brilliant, dedicated manner year after year. A colleague in her community noted that Sister gave herself to her students in a way that she gave to no others, saying “The energy and intensity and gift of self that she expended in her classrooms was unparalleled.” Another community member noted that she was always eager to recount new information about her family (brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, etc.) and to show the latest family photos. A third noted that Sister never held back her opinions, saying of her “If you didn’t want an honest answer, you shouldn’t ask.”

Near the end of her life, Sister Helen Rose offered a simple summary about her long teaching career: “I honestly did the best I could.”

In the advanced Latin class that I took from Sister Helen Rose, one of her favorite sentences (which she encouraged her students to memorize) was from the Aeneid: “Foran et haec olim meminisse juvabit.” (Translation: Perhaps someday it will help to remember even these things.) I can still hear Sister saying these words and their English translation in her crisp, clear manner, including the exact location and time of day when she said them, as if it were yesterday.

(Note: The author of these remembrance was born in 1943 in Galesburg, where he attended public schools through grades 1-8, then CCHS for high school, graduating in 1961. He thanks classmates Mary Vizard Barthel, Shirley Drasites Janus, and Jay Matson, and his brother Michael G. Baylor, who graduated from CCHS in 1960, for contributions to the text, including help in recalling memories of Sister Helen Rose. He thanks Sister Janet Gilligan, the Archivist for the Sisters of Providence, for providing documents with biographical information Sister Helen Rose).