My Other Side

I'm always touting the same three notes in my personal symphony on this blog: that I am a history teacher, a literature teacher, and a writer.

But there's a lot more to me than that.

I am also a potter, an art teacher, a set/prop instructor for the school drama class. I'm an avid hiker and world traveler. I love to cook.

But first and foremost, I am a special education teacher.

(Inside my goodie bag for the kiddos.)

I taught Special Ed in a public school system (preschool, elementary, middle and high school - all four) over fourteen years, before changing gears in 2008 to do strictly contract work. My work with the private academy (where I teach Lit and History) is only one side of my contract work. The other half keeps my feet firmly grounded in my first love, which is working with those who have sensory impairments: deaf, blind, and deafblind.

Only now I get to work with BABIES. Babies and toddlers. I sit on the floor and play pattycake and peekaboo and sing "Head, and Shoulders, Knees and Toes!" to my heart's content. I get drooled on. I fight chubby fingers who want to pull hearing aids out of tiny ears and stuff them in tiny mouths. (Ear molds make excellent chew toys, apparently. Unfortunately, they're also a classic choking hazzard.)

I get to pull out my bag of tricks (see photo above) and play with stuffed animals, and egg timers, and alarm clocks, and basically indulge in making all manner of sounds that, in any other setting, would have people scooting their chairs away from me or quietly pointing me out to the management.

I get to take my dulcimer to my deafblind child's house, and put it on his lap, and strum out basic melodies (I'm a horrible musician) while he feels the vibrations and strains to hear the chords that go with them.

Yes, I sew these on really REALLY tightly to something else before letting 

little fingers touch them. But if you're visually impaired, these bright colors 

and textures are so much FUN.

Sometimes I make my own books, to teach pre-braille skills. I even make many of my own toys, from all sorts of oddments: paper plates and plastic spoons, Easter eggs and whiffle balls, matchbox cars and bandannas, oversized buttons and socks, old bits of textured clothing and cardboard.

And duct tape, of course. Duct tape is a necessity in any wizard's wizarding kit. (Red is the best.)

Most of all I love playing with the kids, and drawing them out, bit by bit. There's capacity for language in each one of them, regardless of whether they're deafblind, or have cerebral palsy, or are tube-fed, or deal with all three. (That would be my dulcimer kid.) I love seeing their curiosity peeking out at me when no one expects it. I love to see how one single response from a disabled child can light up a whole household.

Every writer, it is said, has their wellspring of creativity. My wellspring has been, and always will be, my students - whether they sit through my lectures on American History, or fight me for hearing-aid-snacking rights.

Either way - my students rock. Period.

What gives creative energy to what you do?

Any other writing teachers out there?

Backward (Reading) Glance

2011 is near its end. With it comes the requisite backwards glance at where we were this time last year, and what that means for the coming year.

If you're a writer/bibliophile, then your inventory of "books read" is a part of that backward glance. I was inspired to compile my list of "books read" by the fabulous Elizabeth Holbert, who put out her own list on her website. Below is my own list of books I've read during the past twelve months.


NOTE: I am a teacher of American History/Literature and Modern World History/Literature, and that profession is definitely reflected in the bulk of my book choices. Admittedly, several of these were read for the express purpose of teaching them for school. But hey - I read them. They count.

I did not count books that I reread every time I must teach them (like The Crucible, The Scarlet Letter...etc); only those that were first time reads are included here.




My 2011 Reading List                            


Silverlock by John Myers Myers
The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano, by himself   
Wren Journeymage, by Sherwood Smith
The Portable Patriot by Miller & Parrish            
The Tale of Despereaux, by Kate DiCamillo
Mistborn, by Brandon Sanderson

The 5000 Year Leap, by Cleon Skousen

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madame L'Engle

On Writing, by Stephen King

Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, by himself

 The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

More Than Dates and Dead People, by Stephen Mansfield

Mary Chestnut's Civil War Diary, by herself

The Confidence Man, by Herman Melville

The Pilgrim's Regress, by C S Lewis    

The Annotated Pride and Prejudice (annotated by David M Shapard)  

Journal of Madam Knight, by Sarah Kimble Knight             

I don't know about you - but that list seems woefully short, even with my adding in those academic tomes that I perused in the spirit of teaching history and literature. Without them, the list would be dismally short.

As for the books that made the biggest impression on me, here are my top three picks for the year:

                   

My goal for 2012 is to read twice that many titles. I think this is very doable, as I am coming up on a Modern History/Literature year in my teaching cycle and am actively reading through several titles that I ought to be acquainted with, and possibly teach, next year. Add in the "fun reads" that I intend to make time for, and I should make my proposed goal of 36 books easily. That's roughly a book and a half a week. That doesn't sound too daunting, does it?

What books made YOUR 2011 "read it!" list?

Current Fun Reading: October

To start: a simple yet bald fact about me: I love to read.

More than that, I read a LOT.

As a teacher, I usually have to triage my reading into three categories:

     Fun Reads
     Fun Reads That I Get to Teach
     Books That I Must Teach But Hate As Much As (If Not More Than) My Students Do

I could type volumes on each of these categories; but today I'm going to give you just a quick look at some of the "Fun Reads" that are currently on my nightstand, or at the top of my Kindle queue.

I admit, I read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice late in the game. It took several very literate men in my life - men, I tell you - to convince me that this was not some shallow chick-flick type novel, but a real work of intelligent, savvy, humorous literature. I was pleasantly surprised, and more than I can say, when I finally sat down and read this one all the way through. (And yes, to weigh in on the everlasting debate about the movie versions: I prefer the BBC version with Colin Firth above all others. I'm sorry - I just refuse to let Kiera Knightley taint my image of Elizabeth Bennett.) I'm currently reading the annotated version in order to savor all the fine nuances and details I missed the first few times through, and gaining an even deeper appreciation for it - which is good, since next year this will be a "fun read that I get to teach" book.

I'm not sure you can get much farther removed from Austen than Kurt Vonnegut. But I was introduced to his Slaughterhouse Five under rather peculiar circumstances while teaching high school (long story - with plenty of fodder for a future post), and as a result the story - disjointed and inverted as it is - has never left me. Irony saturates this tale of the time-shifting Billy Pilgrim from beginning to end, and the fact that the book is quasi-historical (in regards to the bombing of Dresden) makes it that much more peculiar and riveting, in the sort of dark, off-kilter way that only Vonnegut can manage.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Bronte sisters. Honestly, they were all talented, but I'm not always sold on how "gifted" they were - at least when it comes to Anne and Emily. Granted, I'm only halfway through Anne's Tennant of Wildfell Hall (and have yet to read Agnes Grey). I've been hotly prejudiced against Wuthering Heights since high school, and have yet to summon up the nerve to give that novel another try. But I've never had issues with Charlotte - leastways, not with her lyrical, haunting Gothic tale of the abused child who grows up into the quiet but steely governess Jane Eyre. I fell in love with it in high school, and every time I've revisited it, my adoration for the fiery Jane only grows by leaps and bounds.

And finally, my current, not-taught-in-school, purely-for-fun read on my nightstand: Stephen R Lawhead's Hood. It is a retelling of the notorious Robin Hood in a Celtic setting, and the first of a series; and while I am only a few chapters into it I've already found it very engaging and original, neither too sordid nor too cliche, and all around a delightful read. For the moment, we'll say that the jury's out on this one - I like to judge a book by it's entire tale, and not the beginning only - but to be fair I'll also say that I've been delighted with the tale so far.

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What about you? What "fun reading" are you making time for just now?