The origins of a writer.

In the middle of the week of NYCUP's Spring Break Plunge, we watched the documentary Waiting For Superman, which talked about the brokenness of the education system by following the stories of a few children trying to get into charter schools.  I was excited to watch it because it's one of Pam's favorite documentaries and she has been encouraging me to watch it for a few years now.  I was surprised to find that it was actually pretty similar to The Lottery, a documentary on the education that we had watched at last year's NYCUP.  But one of the things I appreciated the most about Waiting For Superman were the little animations that visually further explained the breadth and depth of the systems and concepts.

By the end of the film I was shaken.  What in great heavens could I possibly do to be a part of restoring this extremely broken system?  The issues were so complex and so deeply ingrained in our nation that it seemed impossible to tackle or even make a dent.

But as these question marks of anxiety and worry swirled in my mind, Jonathan Walton called us to a time of prayer.  He reminded us that our God is bigger than this vast issue - He is sovereign.  Jon called us to pray and praise God for the ways we had been blessed - for the people who invested in our education, for those who made sacrifices on our behalf and those who believed in us.

My mind was blown by the deeper understanding of how great our God really is.  This issue was no surprise to our mighty Lord.

So as we started praying, I started counting some of the many ways God had blessed me over the years.  I realized how I managed to have such a good slate of teachers growing up, but as we prayed I focused particularly on one teacher and my parents.

A note I wrote to myself at the beginning of 5th grade.

Even though have many reasons to be grateful for my parents, I thanked God specifically for parents that really taught me to think outside the box and strive to go beyond what's expected of me.  Bringing me up that way really set a foundation for my inclination towards creative problem solving, crafty projects, optimistic/hopeful outlook on life, and encouragement towards others to do the same.

I give credit to them for instilling that in me in such a way that gave birth to my love of creative writing.  You know how in elementary school you'd get a list of spelling words and for homework you'd have to make sentences out of each of them?  I think I didn't really enjoy the assignment because it seemed boring.  A single sentence doesn't tell all that much.

My first recorded story made out of spelling words.  What a terrible story. ..and terrible grammar.

I don't know where the idea exactly came from, but one day in the fifth grade (I guess, since I don't have any previous record) I decided it would be more fun to write a story out of my spelling words.  It was obviously a little harder because now not only did I have to come up with one sentence, but I had to come up with extras in order to put the sentences together to make sense and flow together in a story structure (not that I necessarily consciously thought about these difficult factors).

All right, there's some improvement here.

I don't know if I asked my teacher for permission or I just did it and continued doing it ever since she approved it.  There were definitely a few times where I was too lazy and just wrote single sentences.  But for the most part my spelling notebook was filled with random stories built with spelling words as the blocks.  I think this was around the time where I started gaining more interest in not just reading stories, but creating my own...and not because it was some homework assignment.

Look at that, I wrote a terrible poem with my spelling words!

Even though I had all really great elementary teachers, I particularly praised God for my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Hamilton (I wrote a previous blog post about her here), simply because of the influence and impression she made in my life.  She was a tough teacher that clearly loved her students believed the very best in each of them.  She taught us how to take notes in a lecture setting (she literally read history textbooks to us and we had to take notes on everything because she would give us a quiz on it afterwards), taught us about the life cycle of a fruit fly, gave us 20 pages of math homework nearly every day, and made us memorize poems and recite them to her for a grade - even on the bus on our field trips.

A stanza from one of my favorite poems I had to memorize in the 4th grade -
I actually turned the first stanza  into a fun song to help me memorize it...
I still remember the tune!

When I was moving all of my stuff to Binghamton last summer, I found that I still had about 1/2 (maybe a little less) of the poems I had to recite in the 4th grade.  I'm really glad I found them but wonder where the other ones went.  But every time I look at these I think about how much Mrs. Hamilton believed in me and sacrificed her time to continue developing me and other students.  She gave up her lunch time to give us "advanced readers" more experience in reading books of a higher reading level.  It's where I fell in love with Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables when we read with the girls and read The Hobbit when we joined with the boys while we ate the mini chocolate bars she'd hand out before we got started.  It was definitely my favorite part of the day.

From my elementary school autograph book

I really believe Mrs. Hamilton inspired me and shaped my character at such a young age of my life that many of those things have become a part of who I am.  I probably should give her credit along with my parents for laying the foundations and tilling the soil of my love for writing and desire to create characters, worlds, and stories that people would be inspired to be a part of as they read.

I want all kids to have a chance of having good teachers like Mrs. Hamilton.  Where would we be without them?  I praise God so much for the wonderful education I've been given.  Our God is truly a great God.