Like my daughter in her first
school days, I spent countless hours playing school with friends. I knew I wanted to become a teacher myself in
grade school. As to what subject I would
focus on, that was not as clear. In high
school, I had a wonderful lady for home economics and not just sewing and
cooking. My school had a special class
for seniors on a variety of personal issues, like dating, marriage, etc. How I would love to have a video clip of some
of our discussions which now would seem from another age. Because I liked to sew, knit and crochet, I
thought this surely was the field I would be well suited to teach.
My first semester at the University
of Missouri did not confirm that thinking.
As I recall there were about eight areas in the home economics
curriculum, including design, textiles, finances, etc. I took two classes in this field, one taught
by an artist, probably a very good one, but his design class was taught very
poorly. We had projects and he would
line our creations up in front of the class from the best to the worst—always. A friend I made in class wanted to go into
design, and her projects were always at the end. He didn’t even know whose project was whose,
and I found this method of instruction or lack thereof quite unsatisfactory,
especially for my friend.
The other class that semester proved
no more helpful or encouraging. In all
fairness, family management, including financial issues, was of little interest
to me. Adding to my displeasure was the
teacher and her method. She was an older
lady and not an appealing presence in the classroom. Was this really the field of teaching for me? At Thanksgiving break, I visited my senior
homemaking teacher and talked to her about my concerns. I decided maybe some of these areas within
the subject were more like hobbies for me.
So, I switched to English, a subject I enjoyed and did well in. I did value the potential power of speech and
writing. Passion about literature or an interest in
being a writer myself were not driving forces in my choice, making me
a bit of an oddball among English teachers, but giving me an advantage with the
students I taught, many of whom weren’t passionate either. A nice young man in a developmental English class
I taught told me he would rather be doing calculus. Really?
I chose one picture for this writing prompt, a non-posed one
taken for the yearbook at the high school where I taught for four years, the
same school I, myself, had attended. And
it was while I was a student there that the second picture was taken for a St.
Louis publication called Prom Magazine.
Representatives, a boy and a girl for most schools, were chosen from St.
Louis area high schools to write and submit school news to the magazine. One year’s
reporters chose the two juniors who would follow them. I find it interesting to have had this writing
assignment and a bit of a feather in one’s cap during my senior year, perhaps a
beginning to writing “calling my name” in years to come.
My senior homemaking skills and
values rose to the forefront as I stayed home for a number of years while our
three children were born and growing up.
Not long before I started thinking of working part-time, I sent in a favorite
and very delicious recipe to a Suburban Journal divided into various areas of St.
Louis County. The promise of getting a
taste of the chocolate chip brownies must have led to my recipe being featured
in a coming weekly issue. The
“reporter” who came to interview me was a very likable lady
about my age, a former teacher, who wrote articles for the Journal as a
stringer, someone working for a pittance on certain stories. Her children were about the same age as mine,
and she had been a teacher, too, in a Catholic grade school. As
we got acquainted, she encouraged me to apply to do what she was doing; she,
however, was passionate about writing and was working on a novel.
The Journal editor hired me even
though her experiences hiring English teachers had not always been wise. But she said she had a gut feeling that
pressed her to take a chance on me. So,
for almost a year, I wrote human interest stories, eventually getting a regular
feature, interviewing various pastors and writing about them and their varying churches. One of the more memorable
pastors and his church were at an old Lutheran church and school struggling to stay
viable in its north city neighborhood.
I returned to teaching, first at a
nursery school and then in a local community college close to my home in Florissant as an adjunct in the
booming developmental English classes. Then
I was asked to tutor in the Writing Center where again there were opportunities
to write for the Loose Leaf newsletter the center published for a few
years. During the 19 years I worked at
the college, I sent in a submission to write for a coming Suburban Journal
feature, “Spreading the Word.” Being
chosen as one of a group of rotating writers for this feature matched my Christian faith and study with writing—a perfect
pairing. When the Journal folded, a couple writer acquaintances suggested I start a blog, the furthest thing from my mind. But I had been praying about what to do and decided to get one up and running, with the help of my more technically wise son. That was in 2013, and it has kept me writing although not often enough.
Coming to Charleston furthered writing’s
wooing of my interest and attention. A
kind and friendly neighbor invited me to her memoir writing group. And here I am, still feeling a little bit of
the oddball but mindful that the shepherd’s hook has been gently nudging me
along a writing path for a very long time, all the way back to high
school. I hadn’t thought of that Prom
Magazine assignment as an early step on this writing path until asked to find a
picture from my St. Louis, Missouri, past for this assignment. How about that?
