Writing Lessons
Rankins-Robertson, Sherry (2009-04-23)

>>SHERRY:  At four years old, my daughter Madeline came home from preschool and told me she was not holding her pencil the right way. I asked her, "Madeline, what is the right way?" She took out a pencil and handed it to me. She held it in her hand like a sucker and said to me," I don't know, Mommy, but not like I do it".

I called the director of Madeline's school for an appointment. Let something like this sit on the brain of a mother of an only child, and you can imagine what Miss Robin dealt with at 9:00 the next morning. At fifteen till 9:00, I stepped into her office and thanked her for having me. I began, "Miss Robin, can you tell me how to hold a pencil the right way?"

She looked at me as if I had said, "I'm a man". She fidgeted in her chair and appeared confused. I picked up a pencil from her desk and asked her again, "Will you show me how to hold a pencil the right way?" Still she looked at me as I began, "One of your teachers has told my daughter that she does not hold her pencil the right way and I just wanted to know if there is a right way for her to be writing.

Who we are usually starts at home. The first time I can remember a book being read to me I was about 4 years old lying in my mother's bed. I remember her voice as she narrated tigers that lived in the jungle as they threatened little black Sambo's life. She went deep in her voice and growled, "Little black Sambo, I'm going to eat you up". And then she cried as Sambo, "Oh please Mr. Tiger, do not eat me and I will give you my beautiful red coat." My brother, sister, and I would be under the covers for fear of the tigers getting little black Sambo.

Not too long after Sambo, we read the Little Golden books. I particularly liked the story of the puggy little puppy and his siblings. We read the Little Engine that Could and the Tales of Mother Goose. Much of time before school was spent reading and preparing for kindergarten.

I went to St. Patrick's, a Catholic elementary school where Mrs. House was my very first teacher. I loved Mrs. House. She was very kind. At school, I practiced coloring pictures inside the lines with my brand new colored crayons. Brand new anything, especially crayons, is not something a middle child usually experiences. 

That year, I learned to write my name with a long, red, fat pencil on wide ruled paper. If I were to curve my S backwards, then my square shaped eraser sat on the corner of my desk waiting to be used. I loved school. I loved being at school and I loved learning. I adored Mrs. House and I wanted to be like her when I got big.

As I passed through elementary school I did quite good. I stayed out of trouble and from year to year I was often considered the teacher's pet. I was not particularly fond of getting up early to go to school, but I liked being there and I especially enjoyed our weekly trips to the school library at St. Patrick's.

For almost every trip to the library my fourth grade year, I picked up a small blue velvet book entitled The Collection of Emily Dickinson. It was at that time that I became familiar with the saying, "You can't judge a book by its cover". I felt that Miss Emily's book would surely redefine that saying if only everyone could hold the small prayer sized hardback in their hands.

I always turned to a particular page, closed my eyes and recited her poem with her. "If I could stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain." I fell in love with her words. I got my first taste for the power of language.

I very contentfully filled my summers reading books like Dear God it's me, Margaret and many other Judy Bloom. I loved to hear Beverley Cleary's tales of Beezus and Ramona. When I was not reading I was writing long letters to my out of state relatives or playing school. I forced my younger brother to be the student so that I could teach him out of my father's text books.

Every year right before our summer beach trip to North Carolina, I went to the public library and checked out five books, the limit, and filled my beach bag with them. I took my spiral bound notebook and began writing about the trip. When we arrived in Oceana, North Carolina after the 22 hour trip, I would write about my family. My mother is the oldest of eight. I wrote many biographies about my relatives.

It was fifth grade when I was introduced to the right and wrong ways to write, read, and think. Fifth grade gave a new definition to school. My teacher was hard and held high expectations. She constantly reminded us, "You know they won't spoon feed you in college." I was in the fifth grade. I didn't even think about going to college until Mrs. Rodriguez mentioned the spoon feeding thing to me.

My mother went to college but dropped out after becoming pregnant with me. Two children were too much to rear on top of a job and college. My father also briefly went to college but stopped going because he needed to pick up more hours in order to support my family. Several of my mother's brothers and sisters went to college but only a few graduated. My father is the oldest of six. None of his siblings went to college. My paternal grandfather quit school in the seventh grade to support his family because his father died when he was young.

I think my grandfather's educational background was one of the reasons my father laid great importance on education. He knew it would be my ticket to success. I made it to junior high and high school. During junior high, I became less educationally focused and more socially, but I got back into books when I transferred from an all-girls Catholic school to a public school. I transferred to play basketball but my mother told me if my grades dropped she'd put me back at Mount St. Mary's. I wanted to play basketball and eventually go to college, so I began to study again.

My high school freshman year of English was the one year that I was taught strictly grammar, so I'm thankful that I was blessed with some kind of a basketball talent that moved me to a public school. From the tenth grade to the twelfth grade I was taught literature and writing. It was at this high school that I decided that I no longer wanted to be like Mrs. House and teach elementary school, I wanted to teach English.

Mrs. Beach my junior year and Mrs. Ward my senior year, had the greatest impacts on me. Mrs. Beach taught me the classics. Her classroom is where I regained my love for reading. I'd follow along with her tests and exercises but I loved the days in class when we would read silently then have discussion. I liked the idea that I was handed a book and given time to read. Our class discussions made me realize that my ideas about reading were valuable.

Mrs. Ward was my first real writing teacher. She began every day with an egg timer, set it for ten minutes, and asked us, "Write about anything you want. Write about your homework assignment, the troubles you might be having at school or home. Write about a fight you had with your best friend, or just write I don't know what to say. Make sure your pencil does not stop moving. If you have to write one thousand times that you don't know what to say, then something will eventually come to you.

Mrs. Ward's class was a class I never rested my head upon my hand and slept. She gave us writing lessons and I became a better writer because of her. She inspired me. She taught me that when I had something to say, it should be worthy and good. 

I went to college on scholarship to the University of Missouri Saint Louis. In that year I took freshman English, psychology, biology, and a lab. My teacher for English was a student working on her master's degree. She seemed as educated and experienced as any of the professors I had in college during my freshman year. 

Mrs. Mueller's class was where I first experienced peer editing and group work. We were assigned partners who were to work with us both inside and outside the classroom as editors and presentation partners. I began to see that I could work without a teacher and still learn. My partner and I were learning from each other. 

I left Saint Louis and came back to Little Rock because I was pregnant and I had been an English major at UMSL and English was writing, to me, so I declared English as my major when I transferred to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

While going over course revision with my advising department, it was called to my attention that I had to have Composition I and Composition II, which was not a requirement at UMSL. I enrolled in Dr. Torn Isim's Composition II Themes, writing and reading about children and their literature. I particular interest in children, originally wanting to be an elementary education major, but because I was pregnant I found a new interest in writing for them. 

I enjoyed the course with Dr. Isim and returned the second semester, the brand new mother, taking 14 hours of classes which consisted of major British writers, creative writing, grammatical analysis, world literature, and introduction to theater. In all three classes, I no longer wrote, I only read. I found the material to be interesting, but I was not allowed to do anything with it. On the few occasions I was asked to write, it was only to analyze the reading.

I remember being asked to write a research paper on Milton in major British writers, participate in discussions on iambic pentameter, a verse, for creative writing, and analyze words and find their original meanings in grammatical analysis. It was the end of my second semester that Dr. Jaws, my creative writing instructor, encouraged me to look into some creative writing courses over in the art department. 

During that same semester, my world literature teacher, who was also my advisor in the English department, said to me, "Perhaps you should consider your priorities and consider staying home with your little baby and continue your education at a later time." I was furious that he had the audacity to say that to me. I'll never forget his words. The only other professor whose words made such a great impact on me were that of Dr. Sally Crisp.

At the beginning of my junior year I took Dr. Crisp's expository writing course. I was experiencing some turmoil in my personal life with Madeline's father. Dr. Crisp showed me that writing can be used therapeutically. I grew as a writer because I continued to write and I learned to grow as an individual because of my writing. I then changed my major to writing. I felt at home in a writing center in a writing department. These were good people that I wanted to be a part of. I felt that I needed them in my life.

Early the next semester, I interviewed Sally Crisp for a technical writing project. I still hear her words as she said to me, "I'm not as interested in what Shakespeare did, but in what Sherry will do." I'm assuming that no other words empowered me as much to achieve and have pushed me this far to go into graduate school. No words could have encouraged me to continue with my "priorities". She was the one who made me believe that I was needed in her profession, that of teaching writing.

I specifically remember how no longer in that little girl way did I admire Mrs. House who I had once longed to be. Dr. Crisp, Dr. Isim, and Mrs. Ward had become my inspirations. They were the women of writing who raised children at home and taught children at school. I could no longer limit my life to the child at my house. I knew that I must be, as my mentors had done, changing lives in many ways every day.