For the next several weeks, I will continue to use Favorite Memories Friday to participate in Mommy’s Piggy Tales challenge to record my youth in 15 posts.
This week we were asked to write about experiences in the sixth grade.
Mrs. Bowers, my sixth grade English teacher, has probably had the most impact on me of any teacher. It was in her class that I began to see the power of the written word and also began to grow into a writer, myself.
During her class I read The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne’s words, thoughts recorded by a child, still speak to me years later and bring me to tears. I think of them so often and am thankful to her for recording all that she did.
Eleven years ago during a six-hour layover in Amsterdam, my husband, who understood how much this book meant to me, planned a quick trip to visit the Anne Frank House. I toured the home and was moved, but it was when I saw her diary in a case, the actual real diary that Anne Frank had held and poured her soul into, that it hit me where I really was and what her words had done. She had shared something no one else could.
It was my guess that Anne never intended for her words to reach so many, but she recorded them anyhow.
Aside from just assigning us to read the book, Mrs. Bowers, like many teachers I had before her, required us to write in journals. I hoped never to have the same story Anne Frank had, but I still began writing in journals more frequently than asked.
My writing made a change for the better that year, as Mrs. Bowers also required us to go through a process she called Writing Workshop several times.
We were given a basic writing style assignment and instructed to go through the required processes to brainstorm, edit, peer edit, and write four one-paragraph documents within four days. The process required lots of re-writing and peer revision. Often it would be the end of Day Two before I had even one paragraph ready to turn in for a final grade. It was a rush of writing, editing and turning in as the program would wind down each session.
Mrs. Bowers was picky. Her comments frustrated me. But her comments and revisions and liberal use of a red pen taught me to re-write and re-think and do it quickly, as her deadlines were looming. I’m not sure what the other teachers thought about this, but we could turn in revisions throughout the day between periods, which meant that we were re-writing and editing and getting our friends’ input in other classes in order to meet her deadlines.
The process challenged me and invigorated me. And at the end of the sixth grade I was accepted to be a part of my school’s newspaper and yearbook staff. Ten years later I graduated from the University of Florida with a Journalism degree.
I suspect it all started back in the sixth grade with Mrs. Bowers and Anne Frank.
And I am so thankful.
(P.S. Mrs. Bowers would not approve of starting that last sentence with a conjunction. I am feeling so rebellious!)
What favorite or meaningful memories do you have from the sixth grade? What part of you now was encouraged then?
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