Winding Down

As the school year winds down, I always seem to get madly busy and this year is no exception. Besides preparing next year's book order (a job I honestly relish but find frustrating because my wants always exceed my budget), preparing my supply order, chasing down overdue books from kids and trying to conduct some kind of an inventory while maintaining a full schedule of classes (because they won't give us time for inventory anymore), one thing we all must do now is to write about our end of the reflections. Ugh!

It used to be we simply jotted down a few highlights from the past school year and that was that. Alas, that was in the good old days! Our end of the year reflections have since taken on a life of their own. In fact, it's now synonymous with the worst kind of essay exam - you know, the kind with the questions that make you squirm in your seat as you stare out the window and wrack your brain in an effort to find something semi intelligent to say. This was the first year I actually had to look up some things in a reference source. The more we get paid, it seems, the more they ask us to justify our worth. I understand, truly I do.

One thing we were asked to so this year was explain how we made a difference in the life of one student in particular. It was a tough, but good question, and I had to pause a while to ponder it. When you're a teacher, sometimes it's not always evident if you've reached your goals. You hope so, but you can't always be sure. When a carpenter builds a bookcase or a gardener plants a garden, he can step back and marvel over what he's accomplished by the sweat of his own brow. Even after a morning or an hour of writing, we have something we can see, something tangible to hold in our hands. But when you teach, you often walk away wondering if anything you said penetrated their gray matter.

When you work in a library, it's even harder. I see all the students in our building as well as about half the students in another building. My goal has always been to make readers of my students. I feel that a love for reading is the best recipe for success in school - perhaps even life.

So, here's the story I shared.

I had a student, a bright but rather neglected boy who often came to school a little grubby and tired. He often seemed sad, sometimes angry. Perhaps he had good reason to be. At any rate, this boy wasn’t reading and it seemed I couldn’t reach him,no matter how many great books I placed before him. One day, I put some new sports biographies on display. Those caught his eye. He stared at them for a few minutes before turning to ask me if he could take one out. “Of course,” I told him, “that’s what they’re for.” So he took out a book about Eli Manning. After he’d returned it, he asked if he could take out another. And then another. And so it went. I often put aside sports biographies for him that I thought he’d especially like. He always seemed grateful. Eventually, he ran through most of those so I suggested some novels about athletes, such as Thank-you, Jackie Robinson, by Barbara Cohen, and Heat, by Mike Lupica. After he ran through those, he decided to try something different. I got him to check out The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe which led him to the rest of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, and then other fantasies, mysteries,and some realistic stories about kids like him coping with difficult situations. Books won't necessarily solve anybody’s problems, but they can extend hope to them. By offering them a portal into other worlds, other lives, books can help light the way for children as they navigate their way along the thorny road to adulthood.

To teach is to touch a life and I hope that in some small way I have done that.

An Interview!

My crit partner, Heather Burnell, interviewed me for her blog, Frolicking Through Cyberspace. I have to admit, it's the first time I've ever been interviewed (not including the time the kindergartners interviewed me for a book about our school). It was a lot of fun. Thanks so much, Heather!

Here's the link. Please drop by and leave a comment.

http://frolickingthroughcyberspace.blogspot.com/

Crossing the Virtual Bridge

Last year I wrote an article about how composing poetry can help you improve your prose -- even if you never become a published poet or anything you write ever makes it out of your Word files or beyond the covers of your spiral-bound notebook. I called it "Verse-atility" and queried Stephen Mooser, editor of the SCBWI Bulletin, to see if he might be interested in publishing it. He was. After cutting the article down and revising it half a dozen times, I finally subbed it to him before I left for Chautauqua last July. He accepted it and my little article finally made it into the most recent May/June issue of the SCBWI Bulletin.

I haven't received my hard copy in the mail yet, but I can't wait! I know it's such a small thing but it's been many years since I've had anything published in a format I can hold in my hands. Why? Well, there was my job and then those busy years of raising our children, of shepherding them through soccer games, music lessons, track meets and homework sessions. Too many disruptions and excuses not to pursue my love of the written word. In fact, I don't think I've had anything truly "published" since my college days. I've had some poems published in ezines and online, but nothing in actual print form. Now I feel as though I've crossed some sort of bridge into the world of legitimacy. The last time I remember feeling this way when I turned 13 and finally became a true blue teenager. While cyberspace is an exciting frontier, it's one in flux, a format that's constantly evolving and changing. Websites spring up overnight and just as suddenly, they vanish. And when they vanish, you wonder sometimes if they even existed. Was it all just a dream?

There's something validating and reassuring about seeing something you wrote printed on paper - printed in a format you can actually hold, fold over and read as you ride the train into work or sip your morning cup of tea. My dad started out as a newspaper man - a journalist for a newspaper in England called The Manchester Guardian (now called simply The Guardian). At one time he subscribed to five different newspapers. Books, too, were such an integral part of my life that I had a hard time imagining life without them. For me, getting into "hard copy" is the ultimate litmus test, a sign that yes, what I wrote was important enough to print on something that will linger longer than a few nanoseconds of cyberspace time. I may embrace technology, but cherish the old fashioned world of the printed word.