The students board school bus No. 203 in the morning like little robots with backpacks. Up three steps and turn. They greet Mary Raithel, a familiar face behind the wheel for more than 15 years, but a woman now traveling a road far from routine.
At a time when others may start planning for retirement, Raithel, 50, of Crystal Lake chose a different path, entering college full time to pursue a teaching degree, an inspiration she attributes in part to William Shakespeare.
It was her love of The Bard and her volunteer work teaching his plays to children that inspired her to do something different with her life.
It was, after all, Shakespeare’s powerful soliloquies that helped deliver her from a troubled upbringing, the angst of high school and the insecurities of being a middle-aged school bus driver with three teenagers.
Her determination to teach the wonders of Shakespeare to children prompted her to take a busload of 25 kids last summer from Chicago’s inner city and suburbs to the acclaimed Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario.
“The rewards [of learning Shakespeare] include lots of fun and new horizons explored, as well as the sense of tackling something others think too difficult for you,” Raithel said.
The oldest of eight children in an Irish Catholic family on Chicago’s Far Northwest Side, Raithel once believed the English playwright was beyond her reach. Her dad left the family when she was 12. Raithel swept floors and worked in drugstores to attend Resurrection High School, an all-girls Catholic school.
As her responsibility at home grew, her grades lagged. She felt lost until a drama teacher took her on a field trip to Stratford to watch Shakespeare’s “As You Like It,” a romantic comedy about the trials and tribulations of love.
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With no exit signs or lights on the stairs, the Greek-style amphitheater was as dark as a cave. Its stage, thrusting out into the audience, was breathtaking for the 17-year-old. When the lights flashed on, she recalled, it looked like the floor of a forest covered in leaves.
Shakespeare, boring before the trip, was brought to life.
“I remember my first impression of walking to the balcony,” she said wistfully. “I don’t know if I would have felt interested if I hadn’t seen the plays.”
Since then, she has returned to Stratford more than two dozen times and jokingly admits it has become an obsession. She carted her own children there and persuaded neighbors and relatives over the years to make the 9-hour trip from the northwest suburbs.
With prodding, Raithel likens herself to Shakespeare’s heroines–Viola or Rosalind in “As You Like It”–women who didn’t let their gender stop them from their accomplishments.
Her mother’s strength, she said, set the greatest example.
“They would think of what they wanted and circumvent the problem,” Raithel said. “If you want something you have to overcome the obstacles, go out and get something done.”
Relying on her own early experiences, she is passionate about teaching Shakespeare to elementary school children, saying they would benefit from hearing his words through plays, dance and music.
William Baker, an English professor at Northern Illinois University, agreed, saying Raithel’s personal story is “a great story of how Shakespeare can profoundly change people’s lives.”
Her desire to reach children reminded him of Charles and Mary Lamb who rewrote several of Shakespeare’s works in the early 1800s for young readers.
Baker also recalled how naughty schoolchildren in his native England had to recite lines from Shakespeare as punishment.
“Now, looking back,” he said, “it was a wonderful punishment because one remembers all sorts of obscure lines.”
A few years ago, Raithel tried handing out index cards scribbled with a verse from Shakespeare to kids as they climbed aboard her bus. Like this one from “King Henry V,” which she gave the boys, possibly as a hint to keep the noise down: “Men of few words are the best men.”
“I think they just saw it as an eccentricity of mine,” she said recently. “A couple of them would ask me what the quotes meant.”
A turning point in her life came several years ago. Driving one of her bus routes in Crystal Lake around the time the U.S. invaded Iraq, she pointed out a war demonstration to her young passengers, explaining that it was an example of people exercising the right of free speech.
A supervisor, who heard about the comment, brought her into his office. He reminded her that she didn’t have a college degree and that her job was to drive a bus, not teach, she recalled.
“He basically said, `You’re just a bus driver,'” Raithel said, her eyes tearing at the memory. “It still makes me cry sometimes. It just seems so class conscious.”
Raithel used that moment–the sadness and anger she felt–to put her dream of becoming a teacher into high gear. She enrolled full time at Dominican University in River Forest and expects to graduate in two years.
Her harried schedule hasn’t been easy for a woman with three children. Raithel’s husband, John, an arborist, helps fill in the gaps at home, making dinners and lunches or helping kids with homework.
“Sometimes I had to say, `OK, we’re going to eat out this week,'” Raithel said.
As part of her schooling, she volunteered for 20 hours at Blessed Sacrament youth center in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, but wound up spending weeks there, in-between bus runs, classes and taking care of her family.
The experience provided another magical Shakespeare moment.
In June, she led a group of students 430 miles to the Stratford Festival. Joining them were some Crystal Lake children from Immanuel Lutheran Church, where Raithel also was teaching Shakespeare through drama.
Raithel wanted the children to see Shakespeare performed by the largest classical repertory company in North America.
Some months earlier, she had helped them memorize handpicked soliloquies so they could feel what it was like to recite Shakespeare, not dissect what he meant.
Like Raithel, many of the children had their own demons to overcome. One child was slightly autistic; another spoke with a lisp. One, the oldest of three brothers, was in charge of the household, helping his mom who has problems reading.
Last fall, the kids delivered an all-Shakespeare performance at Immanuel Lutheran.
“It was great. I was a little nervous at first but I got over it and I just did it,” said Jonathon Zan, 14, a youth center member who memorized Shylock’s soliloquy from “The Merchant of Venice”: “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”
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The experience “ended up being a whole different world for them,” said Mary Quinn, director of the Blessed Sacrament’s youth center. “Just the fun of dressing up and going to the theater and out to dinner is a neat thing that doesn’t happen every day on the West Side of Chicago.”
Raithel’s biggest gift, she said, is getting an idea and making it happen. She also can connect with kids about the need to stay in school.
“Mary knows the importance of education but wasn’t coming from `I have my MBA,'” Quinn said. “She would say I know that because I’m stuck driving a bus.”
When her busy schedule slows down, Raithel wants to continue bringing Shakespeare to children, perhaps making another trip to Stratford.
She has no plans to become an English teacher, her love of the poet notwithstanding. Raithel wants to teach history, and figures she’ll have plenty of chances to weave him into the classroom.
“Shakespeare’s an excellent way,” she said, smiling, “to teach history and current events.”
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