Reading Memories

This is Week Two of the Invitational Summer Institute for Swamp Fox Writing Project. If you've ever participated in your local chapter of Writing Project, or if you're relatively intelligent and could probably guess from the title, we do a fair bit of writing. One of our very first prompts this summer asked us to consider our earliest reading memory. I'm sure I have some that go way back...reading Little Golden Books in my mother's lap or sitting at the dinner table as my daddy shared Bible stories with us. But the earliest reading memory that stands out in my mind is my entire year in second grade. If you've heard me speak or read any of my previous blogs about reading, you know that second grade was the year of Pam Williamson, a pivotal year of my education that would forever change the path my life would ultimately take.

Mrs. Pam loved books and talked about them like they were her old friends. As a group of gap-toothed seven-year-olds, we thought that was pretty funny. Now, at 28, I get it...completely. She would sit at the front of her room, look over the well-worn and much loved collection on her shelf, and then she would carefully select one after pondering what we might enjoy. We waited on the edges of our seats, literally, anxious to discover what literary world we would be swept away to next. Mrs. Pam would open the book, run her hand down the crease to help the pages lie flat, and then she would do the craziest thing! She would sniff the book. Just once...but a really long sniff. And she would say, "Mmmm..." like she had just eaten a warm, gooey chocolate chip cookie. We giggled then, but I remember feeling like I had completely let Mrs. Pam down the day I read my first Kindle book.

With Mrs. Pam, I traveled to the world of The Shoeshine Girl, and Mrs. Pam read in such a way that you could smell the shoe polish. We all were disgusted with the lack of fairness and equality in The Whipping Boy, and I got my first glimpse of New York City through the pages of The Cricket in Times Square.

Reading had always been valued in my family, but Mrs. Pam taught my why. She showed me that loving reading is perfectly natural, and that sometimes, a perfect book can fit a time in your life in much the same way a perfect song can fit a mood. A love of literature is a love that can last forever, far past the days of The Boxcar Children and The Baby-Sitters Club, and one teacher who really shares a love for reading can ignite that love in her students.

Back to the Blog

This week, and for the next two, I am participating in the Swamp Fox Writing Project’s Summer Institute (SI). I first attended the SI in 2009 and quickly fell in love with the whole idea of that National Writing Project and what it does for teachers…and for students. This year, my dear college friend, Rachel, is also attending the program, and the other day, when we were asked to write in response to a prompt about what kind of writer we would be if we could write anything in the world, Rachel talked about her desire to be a blogger.

She and I have both had blogs at different times in our lives, but neither of us has maintained them with any lasting consistency. So I am revisiting the blog and attempting to get over the fact that I feel like a blog has to be perfectly written and life-changing before I click “post.” It doesn’t. I’m learning…and slowly accepting…that.

So I’m back…again.