Reading to My Grandsons: Let's Write
Roen, Duane

>>DUANE: I'm Duane Roen, NCTE member for many years and a faculty member at Arizona State University in the Phoenix area. I recall when I was in elementary school, I went to the same one room country school that my father went to and his father went to and every day was like a family reunion and there were lots of cousins and siblings there but one year in elementary school there was a radio show which was part of a series of radio shows and each week we would listen to "Let's Draw", "Let's Sing", and "Let's Write". Once a week we would do the "Let's Write" show and I remember when I was in first grade when we first did "Let's Write" that got me hooked on writing and writing was so much fun and that sort of motivated me for life. So I have very fond memories of the Wisconsin Educational Radio Network from the 1950s and how it got me hooked on writing. Then the other story I'd like to share has to do with my hobby these days which is being a grandparent. I have a grandson, Ryan, who is two and another Kevin who is one and they both love books but my favorite thing to do is to read Sesame Street books to them and Kevin especially when I read a book about Oscar and I do my Oscar imitation voice and I say [Voice Impression of Oscar the Grouch] I like other kinds of food, I like salad and I like chicken and I like cookies! Kevin just goes nuts laughing when I read to him that way so it's a real motivation for me to read to him to do that. 

>>SPEAKER: I was thinking, Duane, as you were speaking of the "Let's Read", "Let's Draw", "Let's Sing", can you remember any of the things that you drew at that time?

>>DUANE: Well, I remember for "Let's Draw" drawing landscapes and out the window of the school there were lots of farms and so I drew lots of farms with lots of fields and cows and those kinds of things and I remember in "Let's Write" one of the things I wrote was a poem that was just a bunch of rhyming words, that's all it was, so I had one that went something like, "I have the mumps, bumps, lumps," it was sort of a string of words rhyming with -ump.

>>SPEAKER: What about the songs, do you remember the singing songs that you made up or-

>>DUANE: These were songs that whoever was the director or the producer of the weekly program would pick these songs and then throughout the whole state of Wisconsin everyone would listening into this radio program singing along. So we were singing in unison with thousands of other elementary kids throughout the state of Wisconsin but in our room there were about twenty-five kids grades one through eight singing along. They were fairly typical songs that kids today would sing - I don't remember exact titles. 

>>SPEAKER: Do you remember any of the songs at all?

>>DUANE: We would probably sing things like the national anthem and holiday songs and patriotic songs and those kinds of things. 

>>SPEAKER: I'm trying to remember because I would be ten years later than you but we didn't do that in elementary and I don't remember a lot of things like that. 

>>DUANE: I'm sure it was done primarily for the one room country schools that didn't have a lot of resources so there wasn't a music teacher and so that's why we did that. I have very fond memories of that.

>>SPEAKER: Those are great stories.

>>DUANE: Thanks.