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From: Jeanatkins at aol.com <Jeanatkins>
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 15:16:03 EDT
It's wonderful to hear from and about quirky and wise teachers who change lives with poetry. The stories made me remember my second grade teacher who had blue hair and a wardrobe of huge, flowery dresses with little jackets and formidable black shoes. She seemed to forever be drawing lines on the chalkboard with her yardstick for penmanship lessons, but spinning around, yardstick raised, if she heard a whispered word. But when she learned I memorized poems, she set me out of the door with a book of poems and told me to memorize one on the way to the third grade class, close the book, knock on Mrs. Murphy's door, and ask to recite.
Even at the time, this struck me as a strange task. But while most of the rest of second grade has faded, I remember standing by a window, murmuring rhymed lines, staring at treetops: a moment of wandering within a pretty structured life.
Jeannine Atkins
www.Jeannineatkins.com
Received on Fri 25 Apr 2003 02:16:03 PM CDT
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2003 15:16:03 EDT
It's wonderful to hear from and about quirky and wise teachers who change lives with poetry. The stories made me remember my second grade teacher who had blue hair and a wardrobe of huge, flowery dresses with little jackets and formidable black shoes. She seemed to forever be drawing lines on the chalkboard with her yardstick for penmanship lessons, but spinning around, yardstick raised, if she heard a whispered word. But when she learned I memorized poems, she set me out of the door with a book of poems and told me to memorize one on the way to the third grade class, close the book, knock on Mrs. Murphy's door, and ask to recite.
Even at the time, this struck me as a strange task. But while most of the rest of second grade has faded, I remember standing by a window, murmuring rhymed lines, staring at treetops: a moment of wandering within a pretty structured life.
Jeannine Atkins
www.Jeannineatkins.com
Received on Fri 25 Apr 2003 02:16:03 PM CDT
