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| Teachers.Net Gazette Vol.5 No.9 |
September 2008 |
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Post: Books that influence lives
Posted by Addie/mo on 9/14/08
The article made me recall my childhood favorite..."Little
House on the Prairie" and other books in this series by
Laura Ingalls Wilder. It was a favorite from the time my
first grade teacher read it chapter by chapter to our
class after lunch each day. I remember her saying that
maybe someday when we were about in third grade or so, we
could read it for ourselves. I remember thinking, "I am
not waiting that long to read this myself!" I read
several of the Little House books the summer after 1st
grade and eventually read every book in the series. When I
got to the last one, "These Happy Golden Years" I
discovered that Laura had lived much of her adult life in
Missouri. I remember begging my dad to take me to
Mansfield to see her house. "It's in Missouri," I
reasoned, "How far could it be?" It took me two or three
years to talk him into driving me that 160 miles or so to
visit her home and see Pa's fiddle and other artifacts
from her stories. Laura's determination and spunk were
inspiring to me. She was a teacher and, as a child, that
is what I aspired to be. Her stories were peppered with
Pa's "sayings" that contained wisdom. Today I have some of
my own "sayings" or I have adopted the quips of others as
bites of wisdom. I read many, many other books as well. Classics such as
Tom Sawyer and Heidi, biographies about presidents such as
Abraham Lincoln and Harry S. Truman, and much, much more.
Some books were just for fun that didn't really inspire.
Some books had characters with which I could identify.
Other books truly made a difference in life. As an adminstrator, I try to inspire my students to want
to read...we have several at-home reading programs to get
students reading with their families. The idea
being, "The more your read, the better you read; the
better you read the more you read" and the measuring stick
of success of our programs is "student reading growth." I
am sure this comes as no surprise to anyone that this is
our measuring stick, given the pressures of standardized
tests and the necessity of continually doing better and
better. But, I have to ask, how much more is truly
accomplished when children read? Those questions remain
unanswered for now, because the data isn't immedidately
available, nor is it measured in the same way for each
person. Reading is fuel for the imagination and kindling
for the dreams of the future.
Posts on this thread, including this one
Spot on! I hope all administrators, teachers will read this, 9/07/08, by Frank.
Books that influence lives, 9/14/08, by Addie/mo.
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