Something that happened to me or to my students that had profound impact.

Prompt: Something that happened to me or to my students that impacted me.

Each semester I take my students to the Gonzaga library for orientation. Kelly Jenks is an incredible walking documentation resource. She engages my students wins their hearts, guides them through inquiry process as they are deciding on their 10 page paper topics, and leaves her heart open for them to return as they need any further helps. The first class I brought on the odyssey to Kelly drank deeply from her fathomless wells of kindness, humor, insight, information and encouragement. One student, James volunteered to be part of her demo about finding pertinent sources on the school’s data bank of academic journals, etc. Since that encounter, James has come to me many times over the past four years, thanking me for teaching him how to write. I cannot take the credit; I think Kelly instilled a confidence in him that permanently flipped a switch in his self-assurance. While I did encourage him a lot during the semester, Kelly deposited in him in a three hour tour a belief in his own abilities and capabilities that remains undaunted and aflame. How wonderful to have the gift of feedback from a grateful students.

Describe that first literacy moment I can remember.

My teacher, Sister Judy, was writing on the blackboard (black) and I understood what the words meant for the first time.

Svieta, age 12, for the first time understood what she was reading, although she could read out loud flawlessly in her darling Slavic accent. We are born with the yearning to learn; even in the womb we take in information, respond to stimuli around us, listen to our mother’s hear beat and connect with her, physically as well as emotionally. We have already begun to bond with another human. Immediately, a child learns a gargantuan amount of information in those first couple of months and years of life. At each learning, a light bulb goes on in the child and builds who the child is, in a way. Failure to thrive-under stimulated babies who have not been held. We offer our minds to be held by others as they teach us. Each light bulb of learning pushes another pump of air into our brains, like an old fashioned bicycle pump plumps up a deflated tire. Syveta’s light bulb of comprehension created in her a brightness, a freedom, a broadness, an exploration, an adventure, a birthing, a beginning, and new prompt to be expanded and pondered. See quote below:

“We are wired with the ability to learn to write.” Emig