My writing story begins in sixth grade. I attended MEC, a montessori school in Mesa, AZ. My fourth through sixth grade years were spent in Room 2B, as in the Montessori school students of 1st, 2nd, & 3rd grade are taught in the same classroom, and then 4th, 5th, and 6th grade in another classroom. (The Montessori Method is very different from the traditional method. The teachers teach using materials, and after the lessons the students are released for ‘work cycle’, in which they are allowed to choose what they would like to work on. They are required to stay balanced in their subjects, and there are consequences for students who choose not to be balanced. In all, it is a great learning experience that will teach children how to learn as well as concepts required in their grades.) Anyway, my teacher in fourth through fifth grade [and until January of 6th grade] was Ms. Carol (Montessori students call their teachers by Mr/Ms ______ [the teacher's first name]). She was a truly amazing teacher. Ms. Carol was funny and caring and very good at what she did. She was sixty-two, but from the looks of her you would have thought she was closer to forty. With a degree in nutrition, she was very, very healthy and fit. She took excellent care of her body, but all of this ended on Saturday, January 19th, 2013. She had a completely unexpected heart attack.
The class suffered through the tragedy together... And everybody attended the funeral. No kidding, only one kid did not show up at Ms. Carol's funeral! We were very bonded through this, as humans are naturally bonded by tragedy, and were not pleased when the principal hired a new teacher.
The new teacher was Ms. Kathy, a former writing teacher who was very educated in the art of writing. She was supposedly told not to teach using the math materials, as she was not Montessori certified and had no clue as to how to use them. Instead of teaching math, science, geometry and english, she taught writing. Long hours were spent gathered on the floor staring up at the board as she taught. Her favorite thing seemed to be brainstorming. She talked for hours about the writing process and nouns, adjectives, etc, even though we already knew it. The class hated it. She did, however, teach great writing skill and often asked students to present in front of the class. Naturally, the fear most kids have of presenting diminished, and people’s true skills began to show. Of course, these kids were not authors, but above average for 4th-6th graders. I was among a handful who were excellent at this new skill.
The following year I moved to a traditional school. English was extremely easy, and I blew through it the first half of the year like it was nothing. My teacher was impressed at this, and halfway through the year he invited me into his honors class. Of course I accepted, only to find that it was incredibly easy as well. There was no higher class available to me, but I did not complain. I went through the class easily. That was the year I began writing for my own entertainment.
Now, I write regularly for my own entertainment and for that of others. I enjoy writing realistic fiction about horses, and I am currently in the process of writing a novel. My blog, emilyteenauthor.blogspot.com, is where I post most of my writing, along with my [new!] Figment page.
No comments:
Post a Comment