Stellar Boost
Bell, Christopher (2009-04-22)
>>CHRISTOPHER BELL: Okay, let's see. Here is my literacy story. Back in high school around the seventh grade, we had a teacher named Mr. Fuchs. Mr. Fuchs was a very popular teacher with the kids because he knew how to bring writing down to everyone's level and he was very entertaining. He was one of the only teachers to be considered to be cool by the overwhelming majority. He used to do this imitation of a bulldog for every one of his senior classes at the end of the school year, which everyone loved and looked forward to. I was a very shy and quiet kid back in high school. 
>>CHRISTOPHER BELL: My father died when I was ten from cancer and my mother remarried this bulldozer of a juggernaut named Bob. Needless to say, neither my sister nor I were ready for Bob and he knew it. Bob did a major reckless number on our sense of self esteem which to this day I believe was rather intentional. One might ask why this is relevant to a person's literacy story. Well, I will tell you. I believe that self esteem affects a person's ability to write well. Now you have some context into the story I am about to tell. 
>>CHRISTOPHER BELL: When it came to high school English it was pretty much luck of the draw as far as who you end up with. There were other English teachers besides Mr. Fuchs. I lucked out and got Mr. Fuchs as my English teacher and I was thrilled. One day, Mr. Fuchs assigned a topic to write about which was to write about what we wanted to be when we grew up. I remember feeling a little disappointed that Mr. Fuchs didn't think of a more challenging topic than the age old topic, what do you want to be when you grow up?
>>CHRISTOPHER BELL: I began my paper by stating that I wanted to be an astronaut. Of course, I was completely joking and had no intention of ever being an astronaut. Then I just began to have fun with it. I don't remember the paper that I wrote completely, but I said things like "I want to have silver rims on my lunar craft so that the aliens will know that Americans travel in style" and "I want to have lots of clean underwear so I can make a good impression." 
>>CHRISTOPHER BELL: The paper obviously made quite an impression on Mr. Fuchs because he read it out loud for his Honors Creative Writing class. Also, days later I was hearing about it from class mates who never really talked to me before. What is more, Mr. Fuchs referred to me as Chris Bell, future astronaut, from that moment forward. Mr. Fuchs and his English class was a tremendous confidence booster and I will forever be grateful to him. I consider this paper to be an homage to his legacy and I hope, again, after I receive a doctorate degree, I hope to see him again so that I can tell him how his class gave me the fuel that I needed to break the orbit of doubt.