A great teacher shares with her students more than knowledge. She shares wisdom, a perspective on life that unites experience and understanding. She challenges students to think critically (and clearly), to make judgements based not on current fashion but on time honored truths. And she encourages them not only to think for themselves but to break free from conventional thinking and practices to establish new possibilities, new ways of viewing the world. 

Margaret Ann Peel Jones was a great teacher. My first encounter with her was my junior year in high school. I enrolled in her Asian History class. The first day I thought I’d made a terrible mistake. She didn’t begin like other teachers—reviewing the syllabus and setting the ground rules. She engaged in a “stream of consciousness” raising all kinds of issues about America’s relationship with China and Japan dating back to the earliest days of our republic. She reminded us that we are a relatively new nation struggling to understand and come to terms with nations and cultures that are ancient, beyond our comprehension. 

That first day began a conversation that continued until the semester’s end and beyond. It included Saturday morning trips to the Cleveland Art Museum (for those who wished) to experience something of Asian art. And we even sampled authentic Asian cuisine to the limited extent it was available in northeast Ohio in 1966!

The following year, when I was a senior, I signed up for two more of Mrs. Jones’s classes—semesters 1 and 2 of Modern European History. Same conversation, new venue. The subject was the history of “modern” Europe,  but Mrs. Jones made sure we made the necessary connections with Ancient Greece and Rome. She strongly disagreed with the notion that the Middle Ages were “dark ages” taking every opportunity to point out how light continued to shine throughout  this fascinating period in western culture. 

In all her classes, we spent time exchanging ideas, watching films, listening to music and, of course, reading about people, events and the historic currents that led directly from ancient to modern to post modern history. With Mrs. Jones, the focus was on more than kings and queens, pope’s and churchmen. We tried to understand what “ordinary” people were experiencing and to ask ourselves in what ways our lives were better, worse or pretty much the same as the people who came before us in the various epochs we studied. 

I graduated, of course, and moved away from Cleveland and from Mrs. Jones and her classes, but we managed to stay in touch.  I visited her when I could. And we exchanged Christmas cards long after I was married and had children and Mrs. Jones was retired and in a nursing home. One year, the nursing home sent our Christmas card back as undeliverable.  No forwarding address. 

The best tribute I can pay to this great teacher is to say that I miss her and that the conversation continues more than 50 years later.