~I am~

While I was in San Antonio last week attending the state teachers' conference, I had the chance to attend a couple of mini sessions that dealt with teaching children how to become better writers.  Many of the presenters had some great techniques that I can't wait to try when the kids arrive at school exactly three weeks from yesterday.  

At the end of one of the sessions, the presenter asked us all to think about how it was that we learned the art of writing as children.  What grade were we in?  Who was our teacher?  What kind of memories did it bring back to us?  Were they happy ones or were they the type that we preferred to never have to endure again?  

You know at first I had to stop and think about it for a bit.  How did I learn to write?  It didn't take long for the 11-year old girl that I used to be back in the 5th grade to give me a nudge and remind me.  It was a teacher named Miss Rose Davis who set all of us about to the task of diagramming sentence after sentence in order that we could understand the notion of subjects and predicates.  Miss Davis was a kind woman but she was a taskmaster from the "get go".  I remember not liking sentence diagraming for some reason but it left enough of an impression upon me that I remember it to this day.  You remember how that went, right?

Circle the subject and draw a line under the predicate.  We must have done it about a thousand gazillion times that year.

Plenty of other teachers before and after her were my writing mentors.  I guess it all started back in kindergarten when Miss Josephine Marmont taught the kids in my class to pick up a pencil and hold it in the proper fashion.  Just as an aside here, on the first day of kindergarten she took my brand new blue pencil away to keep me from rolling it back and forth between my best friend Shirley and I.  Miss Marmont taught us how to form all of the letters of the alphabet correctly so that in the years to come we would be able to write a story that was at least halfway readable.  Sweet Miss Thompson in second grade probably was the one who told us about adjectives and how to use them in order to make our writing more descriptive and interesting.  By the time I got to 7th and 8th grade, Miss Edith Goertz was there to teach us spelling and writing composition.  I will never forget her.  Edie, as they called her,  couldn't have been a whole lot older than we kids were.  It was her first year of teaching and she was very beautiful.  Miss Goertz had a quiet manner about her and I don't ever remember her raising her voice all that much to any of us in class.  Even after remembering all of those fine educators that I had throughout my grade school, high school, and even college courses I have come to realize something about it all.

Those fine educators all taught me the mechanics and form of writing but it was up to me to decide the kind of writer that I would truly want to be.  The same would be said for you all as well.

In the summer before my 6th grade year I remember that my mom bought me a little package of stationery and it was beautiful with colorful flowers along the top and bottom of each sheet of paper.  The envelopes had a bouquet of flowers along the back flap and although I no longer recollect the color of it, I do remember those flowers.  All summer long I wrote letters to my classmates, addressed the envelopes and affixed an 8 cent stamp to the corner.  That simple act of putting pencil to paper and sharing my thoughts with someone else was my first attempt to publish something.  It didn't matter that the sharing would be with an audience of one person.  What did matter was this.

I was beginning to be a writer.

Yesterday I had the chance to go over to school and work during the morning hours.  I had lots of things to get out of my car and bring into my classroom.  I met someone new in the parking lot who was kind enough to help me open up the door and drag all of my stuff inside.  It seemed strange in a way to hear my new colleague's remark to me as I introduced myself.

"Are you the new writing teacher for our building?"

Gratefully I replied back,

"Yes sir.  I am."

I am so glad that my parents both insisted that their seven children pay attention in class, do their very best, graduate from high school and then go on to college.  My father dropped out of high school after his sophomore year.  As the oldest son, it was his responsibility to get a job to help provide for his family during the Great Depression.  He wanted so much more than that for his own children.  I have always loved this picture of them with a few of their kids and grandkids.  (Kinsley, Kansas-1976 wheat harvest)