Boxcars and Brian Jacques

“Can I listen?” I asked.
“Of course you can, honey. Put your pj’s on and brush your teeth and then you can crawl into JD’s waterbed. We won’t start without you.”

I learned to love to read as I watched my mom read Brian Jacques’ Redwall series aloud to my brother, JD. He loved the characters and the fantasy, brought to life as Mom created silly accents and a special cadence for each rabbit, mouse, and fox. She read with such care and emotion as if the heroes of the stories were her friends, as if she was there in the pages, ready to nurse a sick child or take up a shield to defend the castle. My excitement for reading began as a desire to be like my older brother. If he could read, then I should be able to. When Mom finished reading at night she would leave the books on the stairs that lead up to her room. Sometimes during the day I would sneak away with these new-found friends to a quiet corner in the yard or a fort in our living room, but I would always return the book to the stairs in time for our evening reading. Mom and I had our special alone time, too. We took turns reading Brighty of the Grand Canyon on my red metal bunk bed.

In first grade I got to participate in a special reading group. We read The Boxcar Children individually and sometimes aloud to each other, discussing the magic of chapter books. By fifth grade we were writing and illustrating our own books for the “Woolsey’s Class” publishing company. A New Home, a book about a mushroom that grew legs and discovered a new, loving community, still sits on my bookshelf at home.
By middle school I was a very confident reader, writer, and speller. I enjoyed finding new ways to remember spelling tricks for words like lose and loose. I pictured the “o”s as teeth; to lose a tooth meant I had only one “o,” but having a loose tooth meant I still had two “o”s. I had a teacher that encouraged us to take notes in the margins of short stories, learning to respond and ask questions as we read. I got to read and perform a shortened version of “Macbeth” in the 7th grade, learning about the many forms of written and spoken word. We listened to “The Shadow” stories on tape during long trips in the car. Reading was more than words on a page or finding information. Reading was real people with real stories and experiences.

Reading was writing
was communicating
was listening
was speaking
was doing and thinking and being and living.
Reading was sharing
was feeling connected
was bigger than myself.

I learned about the world through books and time spent with my family. I gained a sense of nature and the environment in Mother Westwind stories, and I still return to those worn pages for inspiration and enlightenment when I get to go home to the place of my childhood.

Because of this broad and wonderful experience with language, I hope to communicate to my students that reading is and can be a multitude of things. I will incorporate reading aloud, reading individually at home and in class. I will model ways to monitor understanding while reading: writing questions in the margins, responding to frames, working with smaller chunks of text to closely read and respond, etc. Above all else, I will do my own reflecting and re-working of assignments to make sure that the process of acquiring language and literacy is relevant and important to students. I firmly believe that if students find this process useful and important, they will choose to continue and be able to rise to challenges. I will certainly borrow activities from some of my mentors and colleagues, using students’ talents to bring out the wonder of literature and language. I hope to have students write poetry and music, draw and paint, dance and act as they respond to words and ideas we study. Ultimately, we will learn to navigate the world share ourselves with each other through language. We will write and speak and develop our voices in creative community.