I want you to know more about me so each week, I answer a question from My Grandmother’s Life by Chartwell Books.
Question: What’s something you learned in school that you remember to this day?
Answer: I was blessed with some really great teachers growing up. My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Adair taught me a love of words and reading. When she discovered I was reading dozens of books each week, she went to the library and talked the staff into letting me check out older-grade books. She also taught me some of the craziest tongue twisters in the world. Like this one:
“Betty Batter bought some butter, but she said this butter’s bitter. If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter. So she bought some better butter, put it in her bitter batter to make her bitter batter better.”
My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Payne ignited my love of history. She taught us all four verses of the Star-Spangled Banter, the songs of each branch of the military, and hundreds of songs that told the story of our country. She introduced me to the biographies of Jane Addams, Jesse Fremont, and Eleanor Roosevelt. She helped me form my ideas of women in history.
I also had a tenth-grade English teacher who was the first person to encourage me to become a writer. It began when she gave us an assignment to write a short five-page story. I worked with a group of friends on it, but by the time I was finished with it, I turned in a twenty-five-page novella. The others were nervous we’d get a bad grade for going over the page count but our teacher was thrilled! We got an A+ on the project, and after class, she called me up to her desk. Pulling a five-dollar bill from her purse, she handed it to me-said the story had entertained her more than the movie she’d seen that weekend and for me to keep writing!
I just pray you have the kind of teachers I did.
Until next time, I love you to the ends of the Solar System and back!
Nana
