Pamela Horner's Blog, page 4

Reading, Writing, and…Batman?

I am a person blessed. There are no doubts about that. Now, am I a lucky person? That is an unequivocal “No”. Do I have a particularly easy time paddling down the river of life? Again, a resounding chorus of “No!” can be heard like the ‘shot heard round the world’. But blessed? You’d better believe it.

There is not a great deal that I remember about my years in public schools. One would think that the high school years, being the most recent, would be the memories most easily accessed. Not true in my case. But I do, however, remember so many of the books that I devoured during my elementary, junior high, and high school years, even down to the sketches in some of the biographies that I would read one after the other in the Mitchell Junior High library. And the novels that we read in high school literature classes? Pure bliss, especially compared to some of the required reading; it was a welcome breath of fresh air in education that further fanned an almost fanatical love of reading good literature.

The more I read, the more I felt compelled to write. Slugging through the typical day at school means that there is nothing typical about it; it is survival of the fittest and most of us can wincingly remember some of the faded scars. So I would write. Working through the angst of the teenage years, a young marriage, and becoming a young mother; I would write. When my daughter was five and entering kindergarten, I entered into college and soon after, a divorce. I rarely cried; I wrote instead.

Over twenty years of teaching have passed, with about as many pendulum swings of teaching philosophies. The way of ‘doing it right’ has swung from one side to the other and back again, but now, I am afraid, the swinging has stopped and we have completely derailed.

I often feel that I am precariously balanced on the top of a high mountain. If I do not use more articles in class that are followed by questions that would never be asked in the real world outside of school, then I will be seen as not preparing the students for the standardized tests in which these items will appear, and I will topple off the summit. However, when I look down on the other side of the mountain, I see all of the opportunities missed. What if I had teachers who gave up the rich literature and complex thinking that broadened my comprehension of both me and the world in which I live and focused on nonsensical articles and inane questions? I would have lost interest and my love of reading and writing would have withered. If I am not true to them or myself, I will surely topple off the summit.

I watched the students leave school the other day. I just watched. Every one of them as they left showed me, without realizing it, what individuals they were. I watch my family as we gather every Friday night, especially the younger ones. I see each of them as the unique beings they are: one with his brilliant yet uncommon way of thinking and speaking, one who is a wise man trapped in a young body, one who sails past in his Batman socks with the capes ‘a flying off his calves and pants rolled up to enhance the show. And let us not forget the youngest one who has decided it is more prudent to wear her underwear over her pants…and she does it with grace and style.

They do this because they are still exploring who they are and what they can be.  What a travesty it would be to tamper with creativity and crank out standardized thinking in its place. If given the opportunity to write so that I could work out my feelings or write to express myself creatively, then I gladly pick up my pen. But if required to respond to the state-wide test prompts that rarely reflect the real world and expected to spend precious time in class practicing how to do it so as to score high on a rubric, well, I don’t think I need to say more.

I have been blessed by growing up in a time when I was encouraged to take risks, grow, and expand my thinking by reading and writing. I believe it has paid off; I am doing what I love and what I have always dreamed of doing. I am writing. I pray that I can continue to do so for quite some time. Please give me the courage and the strength to extend this same opportunity to all the students I have and will have, as well as to my family. Just be aware, if pushed too far I may borrow those Batman socks with the capes ‘a flying and, who knows, maybe the underwear on the outside of the pants may bear some consideration…

The Hero That Lurks Within

Heroes. We have read about them in comic books, we have seen them flying across our movie screens, we have learned about how they thundered across battle fields, defying impossible odds to…honor the kingdom, win the girl, defend our country, or just save the day in general. They have always been, and we pray that they always will be.

But let’s be honest; haven’t heroes-real heroes-always seemed to be outside the realm of our reality? Those people loom larger than life, doing the tasks that we, the more common, everyday folk, could not or would not do.  When you leave a theater, for example, sometimes your adrenaline is flowing because you just watched the good guy give everything he or she had for the greater good, whether it be by making an extreme sacrifice that the rest of us are privately thinking,” Thank God it wasn’t us,” or wielding a machine gun and mowing down the evil that threatens mankind, then, well, by golly, there may be a tinge of, “Man, I wish that could be me.”

I recently left the theater after a rather intense film thinking, as I find myself doing often, “Would I be that person? If faced with this crisis, or confronted with that danger, or counted on to make the tough but critical decision, would I be that person who would come through?” I often fear that I would not. I lack confidence that the hero could ever be me.

Ah, but that’s the thing, now, isn’t it? Could it be that we have become so accustomed to believing that the heroes who matter are in the history books, the comic books, the big screen, or on video games that we have failed to see the heroes before us? Or the heroes in us?

I look at my eighty-five year old mother. To this family she is the unquestionable hero, the woman to whom each of us can turn, knowing she will listen or counsel, whichever is needed, but it will be done with love and forgiveness-and what will always continue to amaze me-without judgment. It has been quite an honor to have someone like that as my guide.

And the children. God bless the children who are our every day heroes. The myriad of tumultuous situations they endure is astounding. Society has become so interested in seeking high speed Internet-style gratification and so numbed to brokenness that it has failed to look down to see how it has affected the children.  These beings are expected to deal with uncomplaining grace these undulating situations regardless of how heartbreaking it may be for them, yet society also demands that they put all of ‘that’ aside and, for their own good, focus on raising those standardized test scores in school! They are being robbed of the necessity of true, rich learning that may guide them toward solace, hope, and possibly understanding of the world in which they find themselves, all for the sake of more robotic-style education and tests.

Heroes are all around us, in all forms and walks in life. You are the heroes, each of you. From the young to the old, you have found ways to persevere, thrive, and beat the system at its own game. Some do it with quiet grace and some of you ‘do not go gentle into that good night’, but you are the heroes who inspire those of us who watch and admire your wisdom, strength, and guts. To the everyday hero in us all!

Another Snippet of Life…

I love Christmas. I always have. Many people are not sure exactly why, because as they look on and watch the show, it seems that most years some snafu or another occurs as if Santa himself is trying to break my spirit and bring me to my knees, just to see if it can be done. Well, it can’t. Let’s take a snapshot peek at this year…

A few days before Christmas, I went to the garage to get my car and take my nephew to church. The automatic garage door wouldn’t open, so my car was trapped inside. I worked on it (which meant I stood in the cold and stared at it from different angles), called several people to come away from their families and out into the cold to help me get my car out, chewed on my fingernails and ate Christmas cookies.

A wonderful and much-called-upon neighbor did indeed come away from his family and out into the cold to help me, which meant that he did everything while I stood there and watched him do all of the work. He rigged it so it would open, warning me all the while that it may not last, but I sighed with happiness and relief and bounced into the garage ready to release my car from its prison, and…realized I had a flat tire. Not just low on air, either. Huh uh, no. It was one of those pancake flat suckers. Tow truck time.

The second week of school was drawing to a close after Christmas break. I drove home from work, put my car in the garage, and closed the door. All was well. I braved the cold to cross the yard to start up the old family truck, which, if truth be told, I had forgotten to start since the cold snap hit before Christmas. I got in the truck and click…click…click. Dead battery. I sighed and got out of the truck to cross the yard in the cold and get the jumper cables from the garage, except…now the door won’t open. Again. I sighed with more gusto and desperation this time because the wonderful and much-called-upon neighbor was out of town. I called another friend who brought his jumper cables over to get the old truck started. Admittedly, this truck has seen better days, but when that is your only means of transportation to work you learn to cut your losses and be really grateful for what you have. Now, when having little to no heat, barely crawling up any incline, and looking in the rearview mirror to see the lines form behind you as you belly-crawl down the highway at thirty to thirty-five mph is what you have, well, by golly, I am still grateful for it, as it beats walking

And this is just another glimpse of a few days in the “Life of Pam”.

My Thoughts on the Correlation Between Children and Onions

Ah, children. Toddlers, adolescents, teenagers, the whole schmear. I have raised one, am an aunt to two, and am a grandmother to three- heck, I even WAS one once upon a time. As a reader, I have always been drawn to young adult literature. I cannot begin to fathom the depths of insight and information I have gleaned over the years by reading literature that is geared to inspire the minds and souls of the young. I  have been so engaged with this genre that I even wrote my first manuscript and have begun to work on my second one in that same realm.

This sounds good, doesn’t it? Inspired and impassioned by focusing on the needs and lives of the young? Tidy and proper, even, some might say? Well…um, no. Actually, I have learned that it is the opposite of tidy. In fact, I have found that to deal with children you must be prepared to muck out the stalls of life, to dig deeply into the trenches, to turn a blind eye to boogers, mucus, smelly feet and armpits, and try to maintain some semblance of dignity and shreds of humor through their tantrums and moods.

As an educator, I am to gently lead these young minds to drink deeply from the well of education and knowledge. Sadly, though, knowledge has become cloaked in the guise of standardized tests that, in my opinion, birthed the facial expression on both teachers and students that is reminiscent of those on crash test dummies. So imagine my surprise a couple of days ago, when, in the middle of an underwhelmingly titillating lesson over state standards, I noticed some excitement blooming in a section of students. I was intrigued. “What could I have done or said that captured their attention?” I thought with more than a tinge of pride and satisfaction. Was it the content? The presentation itself? Or could it have been some of my witty examples?

Alas, none of the above. The fact was that the day before, several males in the class had written a Declaration of Independence for the Right to Bare Their Legs, aka to roll up the legs of their pants above their knees in order to show off their leg hair. Would I care to sign, they wanted to know? Sigh. Leg hair? I realize that as, parents, grandparents, teachers, advocates, etc., we are to encourage children to tell us what is on their minds, but I promise you, sometimes I run in the other direction.

Yes, children are sometimes dirty, smelly, contrary, and overly conscious of their clothes, hairstyles or their, um, leg hair. You will never be able to accurately predict what they will say or do. Friday night, my two year old granddaughter lightly tapped me on the shoulder as I sat upon the floor. I turned, lips pursed, ready to kiss her on the cheek as it is a routine we sometimes do. I almost somersaulted backwards, however, as she presented her other set of cheeks for me to inspect as she had just used the restroom. Talk about a quick about-face!

But at the end of the day, after the students have left or my grandchildren have gone home, and I am lying flat on my back on the floor trying to remember my name, I realize that I would not trade one day of it because it is the children who have helped shape who I am. After all, aren’t we all comprised of every age we have been? We are made up of every layer of every year we have ever been, just like the layers of an onion. Therefore, I say, “Hail to the children, and to the child who remains in us all!”

…and it CAN be done!

It only took a legion comprised of family and friends, ten working days, and frantic phone conferences that used up everyone’s minutes, but I am finally emerging on, wait for it… social media!

Though kicking and screaming, I have bowed to the inevitable, for I now have a fabulous reason to communicate with the world. I have finished my first manuscript, Acts of Courage. It is a young adult historical fiction piece featuring a young boy with dyslexia that will be published by Helping Hands Press. I will be honest; it took time, effort, and bloody tips of typing fingers, but there is no feeling like seeing it come together and know that your message is getting out there. I cannot wait to share it with all of you.

You can follow me on my Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, and, as of today, my first post on a blog. Let’s hope that I am not the only one reading this, though, and that I am actually sending this out properly!

www.facebook.com/pamelahornerauthor

https://twitter.com/pamhornerauthor

or find me on Instagram at pamelahornerauthor