Who Was That Dutch Woman?
After reading Tracey from Girls to Grow's Girls to Grow's post about Developing the Writer in Your Child, I had a bit of a flashback. You see, I was in elementary school in the 1970s, when they first started having what today would be called "gifted and talented" programs (I forget what they called it then). Starting in about third grade, I got to be among the guinea pig group for this program.
I was not particularly exicted about this program. Sure, I was impressed to be chosen -- the representatives from my class were me and J.F., a boy who today would definitely be classified as "bored because unchallenged by school" but back then dived in and out of the label "troublemaker." (He did get cut some slack by people in the small/town school because of his "unstable home life" -- even though, by high school, divorce seemed to have become a norm throughout the culture, J.F.'s parents were the first to get divorced among any of my peers I or my parents had known, and it was Shocking.)
Mostly, being part of this program meant going to sit in the resource area (the area usually used by kids needing remedial help) when done with classroom work and being given worksheets to complete -- word searches, etc. I viewed this as pointless busywork, a complete waste of time I could be spending Reading. My. Book. for heaven's sake. (Unfortunately for me, I had the same view of math time. Including the day the principal was observing our class.)
However, there was one ultimately awesome cool part of the gifted and talented program in the 1970s in my school: an author visited our school. Not only did she give a big presentation to our whole school, but we in the program also got to have a separate session with her (we missed other class for it -- it may have been math class, considering what fond memories I have of this), during which we all sat at a table in the lunchroom, the 15 or so of us kids in close proximity with a Real. Live. Author. of published books (hardback, no less) and did some exercises about writing stories. I think we collaborated on something.
In second grade, when I had announced my interest in being an artist, that teacher had suggested that I coud *be* an author, telling me that I could "paint pictures with words" (and steering me away from an area where my talent does not lie), so I was already sort of/kind of thinking of a career in writing at this point. So I was majorly impressed with this author visit.
So impressed that you would think I could remember this author's name. I do remember she was Dutch, or at least wrote books about Dutch kids. She was sort of middle-level famous in the 1970s (not on the level, say, of Laura Ingalls Wilder -- but then, Laura Ingalls Wilder was already dead, so it would have been kind of creepy to have her sitting at our lunch table) -- sort of in the tier behind Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume. She also seemed old to me at the time -- she had gray hair.
Anyone? Any clues?
I was not particularly exicted about this program. Sure, I was impressed to be chosen -- the representatives from my class were me and J.F., a boy who today would definitely be classified as "bored because unchallenged by school" but back then dived in and out of the label "troublemaker." (He did get cut some slack by people in the small/town school because of his "unstable home life" -- even though, by high school, divorce seemed to have become a norm throughout the culture, J.F.'s parents were the first to get divorced among any of my peers I or my parents had known, and it was Shocking.)
Mostly, being part of this program meant going to sit in the resource area (the area usually used by kids needing remedial help) when done with classroom work and being given worksheets to complete -- word searches, etc. I viewed this as pointless busywork, a complete waste of time I could be spending Reading. My. Book. for heaven's sake. (Unfortunately for me, I had the same view of math time. Including the day the principal was observing our class.)
However, there was one ultimately awesome cool part of the gifted and talented program in the 1970s in my school: an author visited our school. Not only did she give a big presentation to our whole school, but we in the program also got to have a separate session with her (we missed other class for it -- it may have been math class, considering what fond memories I have of this), during which we all sat at a table in the lunchroom, the 15 or so of us kids in close proximity with a Real. Live. Author. of published books (hardback, no less) and did some exercises about writing stories. I think we collaborated on something.
In second grade, when I had announced my interest in being an artist, that teacher had suggested that I coud *be* an author, telling me that I could "paint pictures with words" (and steering me away from an area where my talent does not lie), so I was already sort of/kind of thinking of a career in writing at this point. So I was majorly impressed with this author visit.
So impressed that you would think I could remember this author's name. I do remember she was Dutch, or at least wrote books about Dutch kids. She was sort of middle-level famous in the 1970s (not on the level, say, of Laura Ingalls Wilder -- but then, Laura Ingalls Wilder was already dead, so it would have been kind of creepy to have her sitting at our lunch table) -- sort of in the tier behind Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume. She also seemed old to me at the time -- she had gray hair.
Anyone? Any clues?