I have met so many of the families of the 6th and 7th grade over the last few months—thank you to everyone for welcoming me so warmly into the Amigos family. I would like to take a few lines in this newsletter to let you know why I teach reading and writing in the middle school grades.
So many of my younger days were spent reading, or talking about reading, or writing about what I read, or writing my own stories that I find my memories are always associated with what I was reading at the time. The smell of rain and damp leaves always brings back the world of
Charlotte’s Web, and salty beach air conjures up the first paragraph of
Pride and Prejudice.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is the taste of angry tears and the realization that the world can be unjust. Books became part of me in a way that books do when we are young: they weave themselves into our minds, they shape how we see the world, and how we see ourselves.
Although I never really thought about teaching as a career when I was young, I always seemed to come back to working and reading with children in one capacity or another. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that I eventually found my way to teaching literacy—and now I have the opportunity to share my love for the written word with others every day! It is such a privilege to work with young people as they embark on their careers as readers and writers—there is truly nothing more fulfilling than helping students to find their writing “voice,” or to discover that one book that lives on in their minds long after they have read the last page. At this time in our lives when we are just beginning to discover who we are, reading and writing can become venues to explore all the possibilities.
They allow us to dream and imagine and opine and expound, to delve into the thoughts and lives of others and to think more deeply about our own.
For the past fourteen years, when I walk into the classroom and students want to share something they wrote or tell me about what they have read, I am happily reminded that the power of the written word lives on inside all of us.