--Who influenced you? Who influences you today?
--How have reading & writing helped to develop your
identity?
--Who are significant people and what are significant
experiences you’ve had as a student that have impacted your teaching practice?
Pretty Lights : Age 4
I remember riding in the backseat
of my parents’ 1976 pea-green Valeri, my cheek pressed to the vinyl, and looking out to see the street signs along Eau Claire’s Hastings
Way. This must have been after I’d turned four, when my parents, concerned
about the number of bruises accumulating on my small legs, shoulders and
forehead, took me to the eye doctor only to learn I was about as blind and
clumsy as my 92-year-old great grandmother. Oh, what pretty lights, I’m famous
for exclaiming when the world came into focus with my new pink plastic
bifocals. Soon I was able to notice everything. No street sign or billboard
went unobserved. If I didn’t understand what a sign was for, I had no fear of asking.
“Mom, what’s a virgin?” I’m told I asked one day, but luckily my attention
had already wandered by the time my mom responded she didn’t know.
The Naming of Things : Age 5
When I was small my dad worked at
the paper mill and he was always smuggling home freebies: diapers, napkins, toilet paper.
I remember the afternoon before I started preschool he covered our
dining room table with a large sheet of butcher paper, torn unevenly at one end, and pulled out a purple crayon from its box. “I will not let any daughter
of mine go to the first day of school without knowing how to write her first and last name.” He then printed our name where
his dinner plate should have been. He began with our first name, with a large, loopy “J” followed
by the vowels and sandwiched consonant. The letters were only a little more distinct than
from how I noticed he signed a check at the grocery story, in one giant and hasty flourish.
Jamie
Utphall not only gave me his name, but also gave the power of naming things myself, of language. I still remember our difference in
handwriting on that first instructional tablecloth, his part script, and my version,
which included at least one of my letters traced backwards.
Not too much later, I
remember him sitting me down for a similar ritual when I
first learned our phone number and address by heart. I learned the numbers and corresponding names, and more numbers, when and for whom I was allowed to repeat this information, and
when and for whom I could not. I then remember sitting on the patterned rug of kindergarten and feeling surprised when a few of my classmates couldn’t spew forth their own
telephone book entries, or at least make something up! Because another lesson my
dad taught me, and made sure I would never forget, was that we were smart,
which has proven to confuse my ever-budding confidence ever since.
For
the past twenty years I know I haven’t always given credit to my father for
teaching me these things because instead I have let my scorn and blame for his
absences fester, and for all the ways he has fallen short. Does he deserve to walk me down the
aisle some day? What do we owe those who give us our names and the ability to
name things for ourselves?
The Library : Age 5 –
Present
Trips
to the library have always been more fruitful than any birthday or Christmas morning. I
remember I always loved the pleasure of finding my own books, but somehow the books my mom chose for me were always
so much better. I remember one in
particular where zoo animals ran an old-fashioned grocery store. I remember the
elephant, in overalls and cufflinks, carrying a wooden crate across the produce
department. I remember sprawling one the floor of the stacks like it was my own bedroom floor. Even now I would rather wander and see what you’ve found
than bother with the curt efficiency of a call number.
Incentive : Age 6
I remember reading logs in the
first grade where we had to document how many minutes (at least 10) we read or
were read to each night at home with our families. For every 100 minutes logged, we could earn a Book-IT Pizza
Hut coupon for a free personal pan, which was basically a party back in those
days. I still remember Bucky
“Boyd” Badger, our elementary school’s mascot, cheering me on from the corner
of the reading log, cuddled up with his Baby Badger, enjoying a bedtime story.
The Gift of the Classics
: Age 10 - present
It’s always Christmas, when the
assignments come. It’s about time you read my Anne of Green Gables, my grandma prompted. Never, to this day.
And now she won’t let it go about the
Charles Dickens. The cricket on
the mantle. The Thames. She gave
me a hardback copy of Our Mutual Friend last Christmas and the expectation that
I was to read it soon and show up for tea. While the audiobook was helpful, I
still have about a third of the way to go, which puts me back at page 1 in terms
of understanding the plot. What
can I say, I am too easily distracted by Haruki Murami’s double moons and
talking cats, David Mitchell’s reincarnation and friendly cyborgs, and every
other new-fangled contemporary author my grandmother has no patience for.
Persuasive Writing :
Age 10
Once in the 5th grade
instead of grounding me for talking back, my mom assigned me to write her a
letter of apology. Unfortunately for me,
she never chose this as an effective method of punishment again.
Nutrients : Age 26
It wasn’t until I became a teacher that I learned about the concept and supposed epidemic of word poverty. Weren’t everyone’s houses filled with
books, magazines, and obsolete encyclopedias? Old calendars, diaries
half-filled, grocery lists, old notebooks, and elegant, expensive cookbooks? Or
at least an internet full of trashy top ten lists and Facebook newsfeeds?
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