Madame Steinbrink Kelly

The following is the text of an address given at last week’s school assembly by Brentwood Lifer and Academic Prefect Toby CH, Privett ’15. I was shocked and appalled on my first day of Grade 9 at Brentwood when I checked my timetable to see that I had been enrolled in Advanced French 9. Apart from my intermittent education at a local bakery, I could not speak, read, or write a word of French. Advanced French? You don’t throw kids in off the diving board on their first day of swimming lessons, so why was this cruel school harming me so? I was nervous. I was scared.  My anxious demeanor was not calmed as the first activity we did on the first day of class was the dreaded dictée. The teacher spoke ten sentences aloud and the students, to the best of their understanding, wrote down the aforementioned French sentences in French with the correct spelling and grammar. I tried. My words were jumbled assortments of nothingness and it looked more like someone had accidentally spilled a can of Alphaghetti on my paper. It was an embarrassment. I didn’t belong in that class so I decided I needed to stay behind after class and talk to the teacher about leaving. My teacher was Madame Steinbrink Kelly.  I did not know her well at the time, but even though I spoke to her as a hopeless student, she spoke to me as one with a future. “Madame Kelly,” I whimpered, “I don’t understand any of this, I need to leave your class; there’s nothing I can do about it.”  She replied, “Toby, when it comes to academics at Brentwood, there’s always something you can do. There’s always something. There is a time to raise your hand and find out an answer. As a teacher, there’s always something I can do too. I recognize that you’re nervous, but after a month, after I teach you the basic French conjugations, you will be fine. If you still feel the same way you do now, you can leave the class in a month.”  I took her words to heart. “There’s always something you can do.” It’s true. At the end of the month I did not leave Madame Kelly’s class. I write this now with my senior language credit at an A level and I attribute all my fundamental success to her.  Here at Brentwood, even in the most trying and difficult times, there is always something you can do. You can improve and you and succeed: sometimes we all just need a little reminder and a little more effort. If we are devoted to that idea as much as Madame Kelly was devoted to teaching her students, we will all be in formidable shape.  On behalf of Brentwood College School and the myriad students who learned from her, I thank Madame Kelly for everything she did. She will be remembered. Toby CH, Privett ‘15