Mt. Pleasant SIWP

With some support from Jim Davis I organized and directed a Southeast Iowa Writing Project institute in Mt. Pleasant. It was held in the cafeteria of the high school. I had dreams of it being packed with local teachers. The truth is I had to beg people to take it even though they got four hours of graduate credit and a stipend to participate.

I was disappointed and confused about the reluctance of teachers to participate. Perhaps I had come out too strong or something. Teachers who I thought would embrace the idea were not even interested. I am afraid some just didn’t want to admit that it might be good for them and their students. Teachers are an interesting group that are sometimes turned off if innovation comes from a colleague, but will readily accept it if they perceive it is from the outside. I was the morning instructor in this institute and many didn’t feel I had anything to offer them that they didn’t already know.

Karen Pelz was the afternoon instructor for the class. She had 20 years of experience at the university level. We met at a training session in the spring. She was a kind and gentle person and we got along well. Her job was to respond to the participant writing. My job was to get the participants to look at research and professional opinion and their own practice.

Twenty-one teachers signed up to participate in the institute. Thirteen of them were from the Mt. Pleasant district or a local pre-school. The rest were from Burlington, Winfield Mt. Union, WACO, Fairfield, Wapello, Iowa Wesleyan College and Central Lee.

Use of facilities, computers, and copy machines had to be arranged. I note in my journal that the secondary administrators were uncooperative. The high school English teachers were the same way. None of them participated. I thought they would have embraced it and realized that their students would benefit. Part of it, I think, was that they just didn’t think they could learn anything from an elementary teacher.

Just a few days before the institute we were informed that computer lab would be off limits for us even though the room sat empty during the entire three-week institute. The high school principal and the computer teacher just decided they didn’t want us to use it. Maybe they thought if they made it difficult for us we would go away. They moved the class from the school library to the school cafeteria. One was a comfortable learning environment amd the other was very uncomfortable. To this day I am not sure who was behind the whole thing but do know there were jokes about it among the administrators.

It had something to do with jealousy and not wanting others to be successful or receive any kind of recognition. I have since heard it described as the “tall poppy syndrome” in Australia. In a poppy field if one poppy grows a lot taller than all the others it is chopped off so the field looks uniform. In education if one of the teachers excels above the others some try to “cut them off” so the others don’t look bad. A strange practice for educators!

Journal Entry

The teaching journal I kept for the SWIP III is fascinating reading for me. I am continually amazed as I read the entries. Each one is a story. Some were beginnings and some were endings. The following is a part of a journal entry from January 15, 1985.

In language, of course, we have been doing a lot of writing and nothing else. I have done some grammar, punctuation, and capitalization instruction a long with the writing but not much. There isn’t a single person in my room (including the teacher) who can’t communicate better now than at the beginning of the school year. We have done some additional work together on sentence parts. This was done as a whole class activity. (I don’t know if that is better or worse.)

In spelling we have used writing in an attempt to help the student take ownership of their work by using the word in a self composed sentence. My students do better on the final spelling test when they have used the word in a sentence.

In science and social studies we have used writing in note taking summarizing, writing about units or chapters before we read them, and writing questions prior to reading.

Keeping the log (this journal) has helped make me aware of what my students are doing during various times of the day. It has helped me in that I have worried that maybe the students were off task. I have discoved that they usually are on task. I have discovered that they are doing many different but acceptable activities. I have discovered the students are developing study and time management skills as the year progresses. I have discovered that checking on the students from time to time puts the student in the position of thinking about what he is doing and he should be doing.

Using the conference form and taking notes on the conferences I have with the students I have learned a great deal about the students and seem to be right on top of what they are doing in writing. I like that. It is also very useful to refer as the writing and the school year progresses.

I am not sure where all of this journal writing is taking me. I have used my journal to plan. I have used it to describe what I have done. And, I have used my journal to celebrate my victories and vent my frustrations. I haven’t written in my journal enough and I have written in it too much. As I talk to myself I sort out my confusion but sometimes raise new questions. Sometimes solutions jump out of my journal, but as often, new problems jump in.

That’s a taste of what is in that journal. I am taken back to the time it was written as I read it and realize what a time of discovery it was for me. All of us come to teaching from different places. Some grow and change over time and some stay pretty much the same. I remember someone describing the latter as teachers who have twenty years of the one experience. I know some of those people.

SIWP III

During the 1984-1985 school year I took the Level III Southeast Iowa Writing Project. The course lasted the entire year and we met every two weeks except over the holidays. We met at the AEA office in Coralville. Anne Weir and Sandy Moore and I took the class together. It was good to have someone to ride with and take turns driving.

The course was designed around our journaling. We actually kept two journals. We would journal in one for two weeks and then turn it in and journal in the other for two weeks. We would exchange journals with Jim Davis, the instructor at each class session. He always responded to the comments we made in the journal and the first thing we wanted to do when we got them back was read the comments. They were always positive and supportive.

I wrote about my teaching almost everyday day that year. It was the most intense learning experience I have ever had. I think I grew tremendously as a teacher that year. It seemed as though one idea after another kept exploding inside my head. I wrote about what I planned to do in my classroom and then afterwards wrote about how it went and what I would do different next time. It was a period of intense reflective practice. I am convinced to this day that reflective practice is unparalleled in value to growing as a teacher.

Very early that year I wrote about having my students write to the local city council thanking them for the recent swimming pool renovations. I gave the kids the basic format for the letter and asked them to tell the council what they liked best about the pool. The pieces were so well received that they were read aloud at the council meeting and the newspaper did a story about them. The students were energized by the experience.

Another project we started that fall was having the students write letters to the high school football team. I delivered the letters to the local radio station. At half time during the games they picked two or three letters to read. The students were thrilled. I learned that writers need an audience and if that audience responds like the city council or the radio station did the writer feels empowered and anxious to write again.

It’s all about audience and reason to write. The job of the teacher is to help the student find both. With an audience and a reason the motivation is within the writer. It may sound simple but it is a profound truth for teachers. Most of them do it backwards. Rather than giving the student an audience and helping them find a reason they try to motivate them with the threat of a bad grade. It just doesn’t work for most kids and never has.

My reason for writing my journal was to help me better understand where I was going in my classroom, what I was really trying to do and why I was trying to do it. Jim Davis created a non-threatening environment and I wanted that for my students.

Expectations and Opportunities

With additional education comes higher expectations and opportunities. Spending a lot of money and time in classes should have its rewards. I never really had a sense of where it would take me but was optimistic about the opportunities.

Initially, there were more opportunities to do in-service for other teachers. Unfortunately, those things didn’t pay well. Additional education did move me along on the district salary schedule.

I did some writing in-services in the district. They weren’t as well received as I had hoped. Sometimes your colleagues are reluctant to give you credit for knowing something maybe they didn’t. Some were just jealous. Most were complimentary but there were a few who were downright nasty.

In-services I did outside the district were usually much better received. It was satisfying to get positive feedback about my efforts from other people in the profession.

I went to talk about the writing/reading connections at a meeting of the Tri-Area Reading Council. The meeting was held at the Winfield Mt. Union High School. I was on the agenda with another person. I knew the other person from graduate school and I knew he had a tremendous jealousy streak.

He was to give a brief overview of some things he was doing with his students and then I was to be the featured speaker. For some reason he did not want me to talk. He was prone to exaggeration and drew his time out to well over an hour. Most of the people in the meeting realized what he was doing was deliberate.

When he finally finished people were ready to go home. I gave a brief overview of what I had planned to say. I got several apologies from members of the group. Several joked with me about it for several years after that. The group did invite to speak to them a few years later. I did. It was a dinner held in Crawfordville and the offender was not invited.

In the fall of 1984 Great River Area Education Agency had an opening for a Language Arts consultant. I wanted to continue teaching 4th grade but they called me repeatedly and asked me to apply. I offered to do some contract consultant work for them but they decided they needed a full time person. I finally did apply and was interviewed. Not long after that they offered me the job.

It would have been a great opportunity except for some problems. Wanting me to move to Burlington was one of them. We liked Mt. Pleasant and didn’t like the idea of moving the girls. Some of the things they were doing I didn’t agree with and couldn’t see myself compromising. And lastly, and probably most importantly, they could only pay me what amounted to about a thousand dollars less than I was making in Mt. Pleasant and their benefits weren’t as good.

I was honored to be offered the job and sometimes, have wondered what would have transpired had I taken that job. As things turned out I am confident I made the right decision.

SIWP II

I took the second level of the Southeast Iowa Writing Project (SIWP) during the summer of 1984. It was in EPB on campus at The University of Iowa. The two-week course was taught by Cleo Martin and Jim Davis. As with Level I of the project it was a great learning experience for me.

Taking the course in the academic environment of the university was stimulating. It was additionally stimulating to be right across the hall from the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop that had produced award-winning writers from across the globe.

Jim Davis had taught in the SIWP Level I that I took and was extremely knowledgeable about learning and the teaching of writing. He led the half of the class that focused on research and best practice. We had stimulating discussions and challenged each other on a daily basis.

Cleo led the afternoon sessions. She was an extraordinary person. Eventually she served on my dissertation committee. I’ll tell that story later. At the time she was head of the Rhetoric Department at the University. Generally, most people are a little intimidated by English teachers and even more intimidated by university level professors who are also department chairs.

That wasn’t the case with Cleo. She was one of the most gentle, kind people I have ever known. She was widely popular with project participants for years. She shared her gentleness and wisdom with hundreds of Iowa teachers and, I am sure, had a major roll in shaping language arts education in the state. Even more, she had a personal impact on many teachers and inspired them to seek additional education and improve their teaching skills.

If I took anything from participation in the institutes of the project it was a sense of calmness and gentleness in dealing with the writing of others. The structure of the project was to spend the mornings talking about what we were doing in our classrooms and research and professional opinion about teaching in general and writing in particular.

That process was affirming in many ways and disconcerting in others. Affirming because many of the things I was doing with kids were supported by research and disconcerting in the sense that some things weren’t. It’s dissonance that causes one to seek out better ways to teach. Without it there is no motivation to change.

In the afternoon we were in the position we put our students in all the times. We were to write and share our writing with the group. That can be an intimidating experience for even the most accomplished writer in the group. Sharing your writing with colleagues makes you feel very vulnerable.

That is where Cleo’s skill came into play. She provided written response in green ink to all papers. Teachers who had used a red pen to carve up student papers didn’t miss the symbolism of the color. Her comments were always positive and encouraging. It set the tone for the afternoon sharing. We all tried to take that approach back to our classrooms.

Winter '83-'84

The winter of 1983-84 was a particularly hard one. I wrote in my journal in December that we had gone several days with the temperature never getting above minus 7 or 8 below zero. During the nights it was 20-30 below zero. We thought it was never going to warm up. I remember deer hunting in that weather. We must have been crazy to be out in that!

It was so cold that Christmas that our family had a hard time getting together for the holidays. Loretta’s family traveled all the way from Kansas later that week. We met with my sisters and their families at my parent’s house. We did make it to Columbus Junction to gather with Becky’s side of the family on Christmas day. I wrote about the huge drifts along the side of the road.

The Area Education Agency was starting an annual young writers’ conference and asked me to help develop it. It was to be patterned after the model of the one in AEA #10. I had presented at it a few times so I guess they thought I would know something about it. Kids from all over the area got to come to the conference for a half-day, share their writing, go to a couple sessions led by presenters. Becky designed the cover for the first conference booklet and button and they were used for several years after that.

That January I started taking a course at Iowa called Consultation, Theory and Practice. Stu Ehly, Dick Duston, and XXX taught the course. It was a fascinating demonstration of team teaching. I didn’t really belong in the class but needed something to continue work towards administrative certification. The students in the class were psychology graduate students, pre-med students or law students. I definitely felt out of place. The course met on Tuesday nights in Iowa City and two full Saturdays. I wasn’t too excited about giving up so much of a couple weekends for it.

I must have had the “deer in the headlights” look because another person in the class kind of took me under her wing until I settled in. The instructors were friendly and supportive and that made the class doable for me.

I was also teaching an adult night writing class that semester. I had taught it a few times before. It was offered through the community college and held at Mt. Pleasant High School. They needed a dozen people in the class the class to offer it. The focus was on journaling and writing stories and poetry. I enjoyed the classes but had to spend a lot of time responding to the student writing. The class ended up being canceled because only two people showed up. I was disappointed because we needed the money, but I was already very busy so I was a little relieved to not have to worry about it.

That Valentines Day I sent Becky a singing valentine. I think she was working at the college at the time. She later scolded me for doing it but I thought it was a romantic thing to do. I think she was embarrassed.

Busy!

When I read my journals from the 80s I can’t get over how busy we were. The same is true when I read my Dads journals. In November of 1983 my Dad turned 75. He didn’t slow down much. It seems like he was always going somewhere, visiting someone, or working on some kind of project. My mother was the same way. They were very active people in those days.

In my Dad’s entries in his journal of 1983 he writes about Mom going off on a Questers day trip while Dad made copies of some Egli family history for other people and visited with old friends on one of his regular walks downtown.

The next day, Dad writes about winterizing his roses, raking leaves and then walking over to our house. While he was there picking up a book he helped Heather with a science project (she was 10 at the time), and then going back home and cleaning up his basement. His final note for that day says he climbed on the roof and checked the coating and then worked on an eve spout on the west side of the house.

At about the same time I am writing about serving on the pastor search committee. We had meeting with another candidate at Ruth Looker’s house. It ends up being the person we select but, of course, I did not know that at that time. I had a student teacher so that gave me some time to write about some things I wanted to do in my classroom and the AEA Young Writers’ Conference. Like Dad, I write about winterizing our house and putting on storm windows. I write about working on the course syllabus for a class I will be teaching in the spring and about a class I am taking in Iowa City.

The class is in school administration and I find it very boring. I had been taking classes I was really interested in and wasn’t used to taking required classes taught by poor instructors. No wonder so many people made fun of the school administration courses. The courses were easy and the teachers were bad. Most of them had “good ol’ boy” personalities.

My students wrote a letter to MARS candy company requesting they produce blue M&Ms. We got a letter back saying it wasn’t possible. We decided to start a petition for blue M&Ms. I sent letters out to schools all over the country encouraging them to join us in the effort. Schools wrote back saying they had sent in copies of the petition with lots of signatures. Mark Twain Elementary of Iowa City said they sent in 40 signatures. Central School of Forest City said they sent in 83 names and wrote that they were very excited about the project.

I still have copies of the petition and some notes about the project. I guess we were ahead of our time on this one. Today there are blue M&Ms and other new colors, too. Maybe we were part of making that happen?

Back to My Journals

My 1982-83 journal is just packed with ideas and thoughts about all sorts of things. As I go back and read it now I am amazed at its contents. It was a big year for me!

In July of 1983 I earned a Masters Degree in Elementary Education with an emphasis in reading. I received it on July 29th. It was the fulfillment of a dream and I didn’t really ever think it would actually happen. I took the comps that summer and finished up the last few classes. I agonized over the comps particularly but was elated when I received notification on July 11, that I had passed.

In the spring of that year someone suggested that I should enter the Ph.D. program at Iowa. They said that it was the time to do it because you only had to fill out a change of objective form and get department approval. I didn’t think I would ever get a Ph.D. but thought it would be cool to say I was in a program.

This was also the year I moved from Harlan to Manning Elementary. Manning was leased from the Catholic Church and housed only 4th grade classes. We first heard about the move at a school board meeting early in March. I knew at the time it would probably mean a move for me and I was Ok with it, although a little mystified at what the reasons for the change were.

As the move to Manning rolled out there was a lot of controversy. Some of the people being moved to that building were bitter enemies. Even before any of us got to Manning there were rumors about disagreements. As it turns out one of the agitators went to the junior high so that may relieve some of the problems.

Early that summer I was also pushing hard to be able to use a word processor full time in my classroom. At least one other teacher had one and I thought it would be of great value with student writing. I was obviously frustrated about it.

I grew more excited about the move and the new school year as it got closer. I had planned to take a computer course at Iowa that fall but dropped it when the teacher required that all of the work we did be on University computers. There was no way to do that but drive up from Mt. Pleasant often and that wasn’t an option. I ended up taking a school administration class instead.

My ongoing effort to improve my teaching skills and provide outlets for student writing fills this journal. I mention the effort to get the local radio station to read student fan letters during the half time of football games. They did it for a while but I had forgotten all about it until I read this journal. I was working hard in those days getting my own stuff published, too.

The 1982-83 journal ends on a very sad note. A close friend had taken his own life. It was very upsetting to me!

SW Rides XII

There are at least five other structures in Salem that are somehow linked to the Underground Railroad. I am not sure where they all are but my Dad knew most of them and talked of a tunnel that used to run from one to the other. In many ways the entire community was planned and developed around the idea of providing an escape route for runaway slaves.

Dad tells stories of more recent events in the community. Unfortunately, I didn’t write them down and don’t remember many of the details. I marveled at his memory. He spent his whole life talking to people, taking notes, and researching historical documents.

Leaving Salem we could go west to Hillsboro or head east towards Salem Stub. Let’s go to Hillsboro first. Hillsboro is in a forgotten corner of the county. Many of the residents are a little edgy about that.

It’s original name as Washington. Then in 1844 it was changed to Hillsborough. In 1887 it was changed to the present Hillsboro. It’s not hilly so it is hard telling where that name came from?

The Hoaglins are from the Hillsboro area. Dad worked for the Hoaglins who owned a department store in Mt. Pleasant in the 1940s and 50s. Dad had great admiration for the family.

In the Hillsboro City Park there is a stone marker that tells the story of the military roads that intersected there. The roads date back to 1839. There apparently was also a very elegant opera house in Hillsboro at one time but there is little record of it. I have a feeling Hillsboro has a lot of stories to tell. I wish I knew more of them.

We turn around and head back through Salem. Salem had the first electrical distribution system in Iowa. It was home of the respected Whittier College. Nearby is Fish Creek Bridge. It was built in 1894 and is on the National Register because there a few left that are structured like it.

We head east towards Salem Stub. We pass the Cammack farm where we have fished many times in their ponds. This is where Angie caught a big bass when she was about five years old. It is also where Dad caught a big catfish one time. We can’t help but talk about it as we drive past.

We get to Salem Stub, which is really only a gas station on Highway 218. Where it’s name came from I am not sure. We turn left and head back towards Mt. Pleasant. Just after we cross the Skunk River we turn left and get on old Highway 218. This is near where Webster Mill was located. We have visited the site a few times. There is still a house there. It was also where travelers forded the river when traveling south.

From there it is on towards home. We enter town on south Main and Dad drops me off at our West Clay house and he heads home to his house on West Madison.

So, that’s more or less, the southwest trip. There is a lot more to tell but that will have to wait for another time. I’ll write about the rides to the southeast and northeast later.

SW Rides XI

Let’s head back towards Salem. Salem, Iowa is one of a string of Salem’s across the country. I don’t know how many there are but it seems like almost every state has a Salem. It is a Quaker community founded by a man named Aaron Street, about 1835.

The town is rich with history and the stories abound. I can’t possibly do it justice. It seemed like every time we passed through the community Dad had a new story to tell. I will tell you some of them as we pass through.

Growing up the guys from Salem were considered to be pretty tough. No one you would really want to mess with any of them. I don’t know why they had that reputation and I never tested it. It’s interesting, though, that it is a community that was built on Quaker principles including pacifism and temperance.

Salem is probably best known for its role as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Quakers were adamantly opposed to slavery and were willing to take grave risks to help slaves escape from their southern owners.

There were several houses in the community that had secret places, trap doors, tunnels, etc. to hide runaway slaves. Most of those places are gone now but one or two of the houses survive. The best known is probably the Lewelling Quaker Shrine.

Henderson Lewelling once owned the house. He built the house with the full intent of providing a hiding place for runaway slaves. It has been recognized in the National Record of Historic Places. It is open to the public and we have visited there several times. During a routine renovation a second tunnel-hiding place was found in the house.

For years there was a quilt hanging on the wall in the house. It was embroidered with the names of those who created it. My Grandparents names are on it. It was, of course, made long after the civil war but was still a great source of pride for me.

Many stories have been told about things that have happened at the house. One story is about how two runaway slaves who had passed through Salem and were later overtaken by some men who said they were their masters. On their way back to Missouri through Salem the locals demanded to know by what authority they were taking the two men. Just as the trial was about to begin the two men took “leg bail” which was term used for running away. They weren’t quickly found and the slave hunters were forced to return to Missouri without them. Two hundred dollars was offered for the runaways.

The runaway slaves eventually revealed themselves to the local Quakers who then set out to take them further north to safer territory. Unfortunately, they were overtaken by other slave hunters who at gunpoint took the two slaves back to Missouri. The three Quaker men who aided the runaways were fined $500. in the territorial court. That was a hefty amount in those days and likely took several years for the men to pay.

SW Rides X

If we go strait east Franklin Avenue is about a mile down the road. We can turn on Erickson and head south. There is a pond near that intersection that we have fished with success many times. That is the place where once, when I was a kid, Mom took a nap in the grass while we were fishing. A little bunny came along and woke her up. We took it home for a while. My Mom secretly released it back into the wild after a few days. I wasn’t very happy with her!

On the way south on Erickson is the Cedar Friends Church and then the cemetery where many of my ancestors rest. We go south but turn left when we get to the church and head up the dirt road that leads to Franklin Avenue. As I have said before my Dad just couldn’t resist a dirt road.

When we reach Franklin we turn south. The old Mendenhall farmstead is on our right. All of the buildings are gone except for the shed my uncle built on the east side of the road.

My Dad talks about his memories of the farm. He talks about Herb Beards father who was killed by a bull on the farm just east of there. We both shudder at the thought of being attacked by a bull.

We move on past the old Cooper place and head for Salem. Salem is worthy of a book or two all by itself and I’ll get to it soon enough. First, we are going to turn west just as we get to town. This is the old stagecoach road to Glascow. Most of the roads in Henry County run east and west or north and south, but his one runs diagonally off to the northwest.

A few miles west this road crosses the Big Cedar. Today, we will travel just a half-mile west of what was, before the bridge, called Bales ford. There are two stops we need to make before turning back toward Salem. One is the Savage woods and the other is the Stone House.

The woods were developed with the encouragement of Myra Savage who lived nearby. She is an incredible story herself. She lived on a farm by herself and had more dogs than I could count. She was an earthy woman full of wisdom about the earth and life in general. During the 1970s she worked with Maynard Bittle, a junior high science teacher, to develop the woods as an outdoor classroom. I had some interesting times there and enjoyed Myra’s visits to the site to check up on what we were doing.

The Savage’s own the Stone House, too. It wasn’t always in their family. It does seem to have always been a place of fascination for my family

It was built in 1888 or 89 by Leonard Farr. It is said that he built it for his wife but she refused to live there. The stone used to build the house came from a location just west of the house. The walls at the basement level are nearly a yard thick and taper as they go up. It is built into the side of a hill and is three stories tall. It’s worth a visit if you haven’t been there!

SW Rides IX

As we drive past Kirk’s pond Dad talks about the families that live in the area. He did that kind of thing all the time. He seemed to know who owned each piece of land almost everywhere we went. I was amazed by his ability to do that. He not only seemed to know each family but also knew something unique about each one of them.

The Mills family owns a lot of land in this area. Hallowell’s own the land on the east side of the road here. Clayton Avenue tees at 275th Street. We turn left here and head east towards Franklin Avenue. A right turn would have taken us down to and then across Big Cedar. My Grandmother, Elsie Van Doren, grew up in a house just across the creek there.

Before we go very far Dad says, “Denova.” There is nothing really there but a fencerow with a few trees and the faint sign of the old K-line railroad bed and a farmhouse. Dad looks around as if he sees it how it must have been years ago.

This community was originally called Bangall. Sometime around 1890 the name was changed to Denova. I have no idea where the name came from. We still have letters Grandma wrote Grandpa when they were courting. Several of the letters have Denova written at the top as part of the return address. The post office was discontinued in 1905.

Besides a post office, Denova had several other buildings. One of the buildings was Maple Grove No 6 School. I assume that this is where my Grandmother went to school when she was a child. I wonder about the kids who went to school there. Richard Breazeale told me he went to school there and remembered the railroad track west of there.

There were several houses there. An old map of the community shows three on the south side of the road and at least one on the north side near the school. There are some others nearby. The community also had a blacksmith shop and a store.

What made the community, though, was the railroad. Denova had it’s own depot. That brought people there to board the train to ride to Salem or Mt. Pleasant. My mother tells of when she was a child, seeing the train smoke puffing along the track about a mile west of her house. I think she may even have ridden the train a few times.

A few trees mark the old railroad right of way on the north side of the road. There was a siding there. On the south side there was another siding and stockyards. Now I can’t see any indication of what must have been there.

My Dad talks about the Lamm family that lived in this community years ago. One of them had a huckster wagon and traveled around selling items to families. It’s just about two miles from my Grandpa’s farm. It is much closer as the crow flies.

SW Rides VIII

So far I have given the reader a taste of what Gibson Park has to offer. There is more, much more! It’s a rich area with lots of wildlife. This area was flooded when the Illinois lobe of the Wisconsin Glacier pushed across the Mississippi from about where Clinton is now down to near Ft. Madison.

A large lake formed and it drained right over the top of this area and then southeast near where Salem, Iowa, is now, to the bed of the Mississippi River. Some say that lasted as many as a hundred thousand years. Others say maybe only about ten thousand years. Either way it was about twelve thousand years ago and it lasted a long time by human measures.

A lot of water for a long time meant many things were picked up and then buried some place along the way. Dad knew about this so when the Big Cedar was re-channeled here he walked up and down the banks looking for anything interesting. Just below the bridge on the west side is where he found the single vertebra of a mammoth elephant. We found several other smaller bones and tusk splinters in that general area.

In time the bank was covered with eroded dirt from above and became overgrown. One family who lived nearby did find several bones and mammoth teeth right in that area, too. Dad and I, eventually, had to settle for looking at the riffle down stream from the bridge if the water was low enough and hoped we might find something that washed out of the bank.

We turn around at the bridge and go back to the dirt road that leads to the place where bugs walk on water. The road is called Clayton Avenue and we are careful not to go that way if we have had a lot of rain recently. It quickly becomes impassable and isn’t maintained by the county.

Down the road a quarter of a mile is an old bridge that crosses the little stream where the bugs walk on water. If the conditions are right we might get out and look for fossils. Other times we keep on going. In a short time the road turns left and starts a slow right turn climb up the hill. It’s steep and rocky. Sometimes we have to stop and get out to move a rock or tree limb out of the way.

On top of sand hill we come to a spot that is special to me. This is the place where I found my first whole arrowhead. I have written about that in another piece. The soil is very sandy here and my piece is really the only good one we have found here. Some of Dad’s friends, though, have told us they had success here.

We move on down the road and around the corner to Kirk’s pond. We have fished it a few times with success, although once Dad caught a big snake on his fishing line here. We didn’t fish there much after that. Kirk’s pond was a place of legends when I was in high school. There were all sorts of stories of beer drinking and skinny dipping parties there. I don’t know if the stories were true and never attended one myself.

SW Rides VII

Starting down county gravel (260th Street) evokes many memories. It’s gravel so you hear the roar of the road under the car and hear an occasional piece of gravel kick up and hit the under belly of the car. A cloud of dusk chases us down the road.

It’s not long before we go down a hill. There are woods on both sides of the road here. I have been in them many times while hunting. The old right of way for the K-line passes right through the middle, crosses the road and heads south towards Denova. Dad talks about the K-line as we pass. He misses the days of the old railroad and the steam driven locomotives.

About a mile down the road we come to Gibson Park. It is named after Isaac Gibson who lived there. He was an early Quaker reformer in the 1870s who was involved in starting the Bureau of Indian Affairs, orphan homes and White’s Institute.

This park area has been a special place for our family. I am not sure why but we seem to be drawn to this area. It is the place where bugs walk on water. My mother and father took our girls here several times when they were young and the girls were fascinated with the bugs that could walk on the surface of the water. That was in a small stream on the south side of the park.

The streambed is full of fossils from the Mississippian bedrock that is exposed at the surface here. It is the only place in Southeast Iowa that this is the case and one of the few places in Iowa. It is listed in the Iowa Geological Survey. My father was, no doubt hunting fossils there when they took our daughters there. I took my student fossil hunting there, too. On the north side of the road in the park there is a shelter and a large mowed area up to the oxbow lake.

This is where we had our annua fourth grade outdoor day while I was a teacher. Both Mom and Dad were often part of the program that led small groups on adventures. Dad shared his arrowheads and Mom her apple dolls or she took the kids on bird walks in the woods. The kids would pack a lunch and spend the entire day out here.

I also took summer science students fishing here because there was easy and safe access to the water. The county re-channeled Big Cedar here, moving the main channel west of here and leaving a small lake where Big Creek used to be.

Leaving the mowed area of the park we can go back the way we came on 260th Street, go south on the road (Clayton Avenue) that crosses the creek where bugs walk on water, or we can head west. A few hundred yards down the road west is the new bridge over the newer channel of Big Creek. I think this work was done in the 1950s. I am not sure why, but I suspect it was because the area often flooded and was impassible in high water.

SW Rides VI

But lets back up. Today we don’t go straight when we get to Franklin. We turn left and head up the hill. The old way up the hill from the wagon bridge is still there. It was part of the Red Ball Route. It was a highway that passed through the county years ago. Big red circles along the road marked the route. About half the way up on the concrete barrier Dad repainted the red ball. He did it several other places in the county just as a way of recognizing the old route. Once when he could no longer walk so well he had me walk up the hill to see if his handy work was still there. It was and I imagine it still is. Walk up behind the shelter house near the south end or the dam and you’ll see the old road. Follow it up the hill. This is the way we went to Grandpa’s before the new bridge was built. About half way up on the left you will see the red ball. The old road is called Nature Center Drive because it leads up the hill to that place.

Most people take the newer road, Franklin, up the hill and turn left on Fremont and then left again on Nature Center Drive. If you turn right you go into the upper part of the park. Going straight takes you down the hill past the red ball sign and to the old bridge. Turning left a short ways down takes you to the old cemetery. It is a very interesting place to visit. My cousin, Terry, is buried there. He would have loved it!

The nature center is on the way into the park. It is a great facility! Mom and Dad volunteered there many Sunday afternoon greeting visitors. It has recently been remodeled and cousin, Steve Mendenhall, did the beautiful mural inside.

This park might be one of Henry County’s best-kept secrets. There are some seldom-used campsites there. I camped there as a scout several times and explored the steep bluff with family and friends. I remember an old well at the top of the hill near the parking lot. We used to pump the water out and drink it. It was fresh and cool!

One loop through the park and we head back out towards Franklin. On the way Dad talks about the Red Ball Route that came up the hill on the old road which is just a overgrown path now used by park staff.

At Franklin we turn left, south, towards Salem. We go past the Oldt farm on the right and the Mertins place on the right. After a short distance we turn right on County Highway H46. I am not sure why they call these gravel roads highways but they do.

Gibson Park is a couple miles down this road. I have been all over this territory hunting deer and at one time or another I think Dad and I have stepped on almost every inch of this ground.

SW Rides V

Oakland Mills had a gristmill, woolen mill, sawmill, and a river ford. It is the location of one of Iowa’s first state parks and is a popular camping area. It is even to this day known far and wide as a great place to catch catfish. My grandfather fished there regularly and I did, too. The present Oakland Mills dam was built in the 20s and the powerhouse used to be on the south side of the river.

There is a marker where the Oakland Mills store used to be. I remember it but think it was torn down after the flood of 1963. Dad was instrumental in having a marker placed there. You can see it today if you go to visit.

On the West side of County Highway H46 (Franklin Avenue) is another area we often drive through. There is a campground and boat ramp there. When we have canoed down the river this is typically where we got out. For years there was a center pier from the old railroad bridge out in the middle of the river. It is gone now.

Today, on the west end of the campground there is an observation tower built in memory of my cousin and dear friend, Terry Ross. Terry developed the wetlands up stream from there and you get a beautiful view. Up on the platform level of that tower is a comfortable bench with a marker in memory of my father. He would have loved it. Terry died too young, 53, in the spring of 2001 and Dad died at age 93 late that fall.

We make a pass through the campground and then back out to the road and then turn right and head across the bridge. On the other side we turn left and head for the area by the dam. There is parking there and we sometimes get out and walk up and talk to the fellows fishing off the dam. We have fished here many times. I wrote about fishing on the pier that extends out from the dam one time. We have also fished along the bank below the dam.

When we get back to Franklin Avenue we can go straight on 255 St. to 250 St. If we go that way we would come to Pleasant Point. Not much there but a church and a building that used to be a dairy. If we turn right at the T we could go by the old Wilson Place that has an Indian Mound overlooking the river, then on past the old maids place and on down to where Ketchem’s bridge crossed the river. The bridge has been closed for years.

If we turn left at Pleasant Point we could take 250th St. to Clayton Avenue and then follow it around past Red Lynn’s place down across Big Cedar and out to Highway 34. I have hunted and fished the Pleasant Point area many times.

Instead of taking Clayton we could stay on 250th Street and go by the Rockwell farm. Ron Marshall and I used to hunt rabbits there every fall. Dad and I hunted arrowheads in the fields there and we put canoes in Big Creek several times for floats to the Skunk or on down to Oakland.

SW Rides IV

Oh, Oakland Mills! The stories you could tell! Early on I think people tended to settle along rivers and streams. Fresh water was, of course, important as well as the fish being a good source for food and the river, itself, a mode of transportation. The river was called Chicaqua at that time. I kind of wish the name had never been changed.

There was a natural ford at the location and many people passing through the area used it to get across the river. A few folks must have settled in the area. There was a horse-powered gristmill in the area owned by Mr. Wilbourne. The exact location is not known.

The oak trees must have been magnificent! They probably covered the entire valley. There weren’t any roads. Trails cut through the timber and there were places where it was difficult to get a wagon through. The areas that did not have trees were covered with tall grasses. The grasses were often so tall that being on horseback was the only way you could see what was ahead.

Another early settler was a dam builder whose name was Robert Wilson. He was from Indiana. Historical records say he was a professional dam builder. I can only assume that means that he had a lot of experience. He built a sawmill on the south side of the river at Oakland in 1836 or 37. In 1838 he started work on the log and stone dam. He built a four-story gristmill at the opposite end of the dam on the north side of the river.

In those days there was an interesting law about grinding grain in the order in which people arrived at the mill. It was to prevent someone from bumping in line. The miller could be fined up to 5 dollars for grinding the grain out of order. There must have been some interesting stories that precipitated that law.

By the time of the Civil War a woolen mill was built on the south side of the river. It employed up to twelve people. The two-story building had carding rolls and spinning frames on the second floor and weaving looms on the first floor. I suppose some of the product was sold locally and the rest sent off to be sold in other places.

A licensed ferry was established at Oakland Mills in 1837. It cost 25 cents for a horse and rider to cross. It cost twelve and one-half cents to take a pig across and twenty-five to seventy-five cents to take a wagon across. Today it is hard to imagine waiting for a man and his pig to cross so you can have your turn. Could be kind of messy, too.

Houses sprung up around this small community and a school and church were established nearby. Oakland Mills became a community. It still is a unique place that draws many visitors year round. I seem to be drawn to that place, too, and visit it often when I am in the area.

SW Rides III

It is beautiful here and the road runs parallel to river all the way to Oakland Mills. I have placed bank poles along this stretch of the river when it is rising to catch catfish. Down the road a ways is an opening on the right with four or five cabins.

Included in the group is one large white one with a sign on it that says Mt. Pleasant Country Club. In the hundreds of times I have driven by this cabin I have never seen anyone here. Dad says some groups come down and play cards there but I have never seen them.

We pass Gholson’s cabin and then Welander’s. I used to be part of a group that had dinner there once a month. We took turns being responsible for the cooking and played cards after the meal. It was usually a good time.

We come to the point where the other dirt Skunk River Road (253rd Street) intersects with the one we are on. We pass the lane that leads to some cabins on the left. One is the old cabin that belonged to Dr. Jackson. I visited it with Billy several times when I was growing up.

On the right back up a long lane through a cornfield is the Virden house. Dad knew the Virdens well and sometimes we stopped there to visit. In the distance we can see the Oakland Mills Road that we turned off of to take Hickory Avenue.

For years there was a maple syrup cooking house out in the middle of the cornfield and west of the house. It was just really a shelter with a roof but no walls. It was where they cooked the maple sap down to make the syrup. I don’t know much about the process and usually think of it as something that happens out east but Dad says it used to be quite common around here.

We follow the road towards Oakland. The closer we get to the little community the more cabins we see. Some are pretty primitive and some are year around homes. The area floods when the river is high every five or ten years but the people seem to always come back, drawn to the water I guess.

The dam is coming up on the left. In low water times we have scoured the rocks just below the dam for fossils. Other times we have fished here. I have seen the water so low that you could walk on the dam and not get wet. I have also seen it so high that you could hardly tell the dam was even there.

At one time Oakland Mills had a railroad depot on the K-line. I am not exactly sure where that was but think it was on the north side of Oakland Mills road somewhere. The wagon bridge at Oakland was nominated for the national register and continues to be a footbridge to this day. I remember going across in a car many times when I was growing up. A modern bridge was built west of it in the early 60s.

SW Rides II

We turn left and head up the winding Hickory Avenue gravel road. Dust kicks up behind us in thick clouds as the small rocks hit against the bottom of the car. We are traveling through an area that I have hunted and fished. The Smiths own much of it. They are all related to each other somehow.

Soon we are at the intersection of Skunk River Road (253rd Street). It’s a right turn down a dirt road to the river. We used to go that way when we went to Jackson’s cabin with I was a kid. I have always kind of liked it because the trees are grown up and form a canopy over the road. My Dad usually can’t resist a dirt road but this time we go on by and head towards the other Skunk River Road (265th Street).

Down the road a ways is a relatively new house. When they were doing work for a pond nearby they dug up a large unusual rock deep in the ground. The landowner was convinced it was a ceremonial rock of some sort that was left by the Indians. No one else seemed to think it was anything but a large, somewhat unusual rock.

He called Dad and asked him to come and take a look at it because he knew Dad knew a lot about the Indians and the artifacts they left behind. The fellow was so sure it was something significant and actually got angry when Dad suggested it was probably just a natural rock formation. He invited everyone he could think of hoping someone would agree with him regarding the origin of the rock to no avail. He even invited someone from the State Archeologist Office to take a look at it. He was reportedly furious that the archeologist would not agree with him.

I heard the guy moved the rock to the location of his new house and then built the house around it. I have never seen it but I assume it is still there. I remember some of my Dad’s friends joking about it several years later.

We go on. The intersection of Hickory Avenue and Skunk River Road (265th Street) is a four way stop. The house on the corner on our right is another Smith. I had one of his sons in school. He was a hard working likeable kid. If you go straight here you go over the hill and down into the river bottom. My friend, Steve, lived in a cabin down there for a while. I visited him once. He had a pet raccoon that lived in the closet and could go outside through a special door Steve had built.

Left would take us by Allen Shook’s place and then over to the old highway 218. We turn right and look at all the cattle on the hillside and we head toward the river. The hill is steep and the road swings to the left. My mother can’t pass this point without telling about the time they started up this hill when she was a child and that it was too steep for the old car and it started to creep backwards. Somehow they got it stopped and then backed up the hill that day.

The road leads to Faulkner Bridge but it is gone now and so we turn right down another steep but short hill. On the right is one of my favorite places. I wrote about it in another piece some time ago. On the left is a boat ramp and a small camping area. This is the place where I turned the six squirrels I caught in the live trap loose.

The river to the left is where a drunk yelled at Terry and I as we were canoeing by and threatened to shoot us with his pistol. He waved it around some by never fired it. We waited out in the middle of the river until the guy and his buddy got in their car and left. I never told my parents about that because I thought it would scare them.

Rides (#1 of Many)

A while back I wrote twelve installments about rides my Dad and I would take to the northwestern part of Henry County. We did venture into Jefferson County, too For us rides in that area were the most frequent. The second most frequent direction was rides to the southwestern part of the county. I will write about those in this series.

It is important to realize as I write these that I include them in what appears to be one long ride but was really often shorter rides that covered a smaller amount of territory. But, for the sake of trying to include all of the options I will write about rides to the southwestern part of the county as one long ride.

This usually started by either going southwest on the Oakland Mills Road or west on Highway 34 and then south on county Highway W55, also know as Franklin Avenue. Today we head south on Jefferson Street which becomes Oakland Mills road at the edge of town…south past Irish Ridge Road and Dad begins to talk about the abandoned rock quarry over the hill to the west near what is now Mt. Pleasant’s sewage treatment plant. I hunted rabbits back in that area when I was a teenager.

We continue over the hill and down towards Big Creek. There is another rock quarry near the road on the right. We have hunted for fossils in there a few times and I took several summer science students on trips there to chip fossils out of the rock. Crossing the bridge we can see remnants of the K-line railroad bridge that crossed the river there. The rest of the road to Oakland Mills pretty much follows right on top of the old railroad bed.

Off to the west of the bridge about a mile is the site of Mt. Pleasant’s original waterworks plant. There was a small dam there at one time and water was pumped from the reservoir to the town. We have been to the site many times on foot and in a canoe. I once caught a big catfish right where the old dam was. All that is left now are a few stone remnants of the structure in the bank of the creek. On one walk back in that back in that area I came across a small spring bubbling out of the ground.

Big Creek County Park is also back that way. It is as close to a natural area as you can get in Henry County because the only way you can get there is by walking or when the creek is high enough by canoe.

Going on down the road there is a large pond on the right hand side of the road. Shortly after the pond we have to make a decision. We can continue on Oakland Mills Road to Oakland Mills or turn left on the gravel Hickory Avenue. Hickory Avenue takes you to two different Skunk River Roads. One is dirt and is also known as 253rd Street. The other, gravel, is also known as 265th Street.

Let’s take Hickory Avenue.

Grandpa’s Barn Revisited

Grandpa’s barn looked huge to me when I was eight years old. It was a typical farm fixture in the 1950s in rural Iowa. We lived in town and there was a smaller version of that barn across the alley from our house. It was locked up tight and I wasn’t allowed to explore it because it was on Mrs. Hall’s property.

I remember getting as close as I possibility could to it and peaking through the cracks between the vertical barn boards. I really couldn’t see anything but pitch black but I told my sister, Loretta, that I could. She didn’t believe me and asked what I saw. I, of course, wouldn’t tell her I saw nothing. So, I think I just said “things” and said no more. I am sure she wasn’t fooled.

That’s one of the reasons I liked Grandpa’s barn. It was wide open and full of adventure. I wasn’t restricted in any way except to stay out of the section where the cows were. No problem there because I was scared to death of them.

The big rusty red barn was across the barn lot northeast of the house. Its six-foot lightning rods looked small pointing up at the sky along the peak of the roof. It seemed like it was quite a ways from the house but now realize it probably wasn’t nearly as far as I remember. I walked between the scavenging chickens to get there.

A farm has a smorgasbord of odors. Not all of them bad. They change with the seasons. The fall oders might be the most pleasant. There are some not so pleasant odors like hog or cattle manure but fresh turned soil or corn stalks aren’t so bad…somewhat pleasant in fact. Cut grass or straw has a fresher, richer touch. In the barn there is a blend of cow manure, hay, straw, feathers, and dust. Lots of dust! Maybe not the best place for a kid with lots of allergies but still a place impossible to stay away from.

Going in, there were stalls on the right and the milking section on the left. All were separated from the center walkway by sturdy wooden gates. Old tack, covered with a thick layer of dust, hung on the walls or draped over the gates. The back third or so of the barn was separated from the rest of the barn and it was where the cows were when the weather was bad or they wanted to be out of the sun. There were huge feed bunks in there and that part of the barn was open to the ceiling high above.

The other two thirds of the upper part of the barn was the loft…a virtual cathedral of wonder to every young boy who entered. If there are sacred places for young boys, barn lofts have to be high on that list. They are sometimes called haylofts because that is where hay is stored. That was in the day of the rectangular hay bales that could be stacked to ceiling.

Climbing up into that loft was like stepping into another world. We built forts between the bales, and castles with high parapets. We gazed out across our imaginary kingdom from the big loft window high up in the barn. It was only limited by a young boy’s imagination.

The ropes and huge pulleys hanging from the top of the barn ceiling were the rigging for our sailing ship and the soft bales made a great cushion for our feigned falls in our imaginary battles.

We sometimes hung dangerously over the cattle stall area of the barn or climbed to the very top to inspect the new baby pigeons in their nests. We captured a few young ones with the naive thought that we would train them to be homing pigeons. The first time we let them loose they flew away and we never saw them again.

Oh, that barn was a special place! It still is in my memory.

Summer Writers' Camp

In October of 1982, I went to the fall conference of the Southeast Iowa Writing Project. These early events were held at a hotel on the highway near the Amanas. They later moved to the Marriott in downtown Des Moines. I liked the Amana site because it was much closer to home and not nearly as congested.

There were a number of impressing speakers at this event. Teachers, writers, area education agency consultants, and professors from the University of Iowa were part of the group. One was a Cedar Rapids teacher named Barb Scott.

Barb told about a unique project she and others had come up with. They patterned it after the sports camps that are offered for kids in the summer only it was a writers’ camp. They charged 4-6 graders $75 to be part of a weeklong half day camps. For some reason Barb had stopped doing the camps.

I was intrigued! I thought it was a viable option for Mt. Pleasant and a perfect way for me to earn some money in the summer time. I explored the option with the school district administration and got the go ahead to do it.

I decided to try to make it a positive supportive environment for young writers. I wanted the camp to be pressure free and comfortable. There would be no assignments and no grades. Kids would simply be encouraged to write and share their writing.

My plan was to charge $25 per person for the week and meet each day from 9:00-11:30 with some kind of snack time built in. In later years it was supported with Phase 3 dollars. I limited each group to no more than twelve students. We would have several computers available for those who wanted to write using them.

I sent flyers out through the district with a form to interested kids to sign up and pay the fee. I was inundated with interest and had enough to have two sessions. There was a waiting list of nearly 30 kids. I would have had more camps but just didn’t have the time with graduate school. From that point on every year we had far more kids interested than we could accommodate.

I gathered some unique things for the participants. Each would get some pencils, pens, paper and a Summer Writers’ Camp T-shirt. When each student registered they indicated their size and it was then given to them the first day of their week. That proved to be a good move and provided walking advertisement for the camps.

The camps continued for several years. Some weeks we had two going on at the same time and I hired another teacher to help with them. Heather helped me with several ones and was really great to have around.

I turned it over to others when I left the district and it continued for a few years and then died out. I felt bad that it didn’t continue but there really wasn’t much I could do about it. Maybe I’ll do something like that again someday?

Details

The journal not only was a place for ideas but a place to work out the specifics. Teachers have a plan book to use if they want but I used my journal that way. As with anything else plans evolve to some extent as they roll out. Teachers read the success or failure of activities and make adjustments on the fly.

At this point in my career I had not made the shift away from published materials to more teacher facilitated and student choice of reading materials. Things were changing, however, and more authentic learning was creeping in. I planned a five-day cycle for reading. Notice how little student reading is actually happening?

On day one I planned to introduce vocabulary words and have students add them to their vocabulary folders and word banks. Then I would have the students do the Skill Pak and Studybook that went with the vocabulary.

Day two was the time to raise the student awareness of what they already knew (schema) about the story topic, introduce and assign the story. This would be the only real reading time during the week.

On day three I would lead the students to do a story map and questioning activities and a strategy called “deeper meaning.” I don’t remember what the latter was so it was not deep enough or, maybe, too deep for me? The lesson ended with a Skill Pak and Studybook assignment.

Day four included decoding activities (kind of irrelevant after the fact), more Skill Pak and Studybook pages, something called “Int. Rel. Act.” and Creativity pages. I don’t remember what the latter two were?

And, finally, on day five we checked everything and shared activities. Whew! Lots of workbook stuff!

The five-day cycle started all over again the next week. Frankly, I was bored with it and so were the students but I just didn’t know what else to do.

I tried to weave in sustained silent reading (SSR), teacher pupil conferences about books they were reading, and sustained silent writing (SSW). These were probably the most important things I could be doing and they were getting the least attention and often didn’t happen at all because there just wasn’t time.

The SIWP (Southeast Iowa Writing Project) had prompted a dissonance in me. A nagging feeling that things were not nearly as good as they could be. I began looking at everything with a critical eye and wondered why? Doing things in a way I had always done them or the way some publisher who has never met my kids didn’t seem legitimate.

Planning

My journal became a place to write down things I wanted to remember or try in my classroom. In various degrees of detail I planned many activities for the school year. In the August 20, 1982, entry I listed some things I wanted to do that year.

One was to contact the county conservation officer about my class adopting an area in the wild to visit and take care of. I did contact the guy and explained that my class was looking for a place they could take care of, clean up and utilize as an outdoor classroom. I thought there were a lot of lessons to be learned and if the kids did something like this they might be better stewards of the land as they grew up.

The guy was actually offended that I asked and said he had people who made their living doing these things and we would be taking work away from them. He said he really didn’t know of any spots where we could clean up trash or build small check dams. I was mystified.

Another idea was to have my mother come and work with my class several times on writing poetry and ultimately submit student writing to the Iowa Poetry contest. She did and we did. I don’t think I had any students who ended up being published in Lyrical Iowa but don’t remember for sure.

Another one was to try to develop a way of assessing student writing to use as a measure of growth. That was not an easy task and I don’t think I ever came up with anything concrete. I know the sheer volume of writing increased and I suspect the quality did too but didn’t come up with a good way to measure it.

I listed getting the Young People’s Column that I wrote about previously going and that did indeed happen as I explained in that piece.

I listed wanting to keep a daily journal to record happenings, ideas and experiences. Nearly an impossible task but I also planned to have a required journal writing time for the students and thought I could do my journaling during that time, too.

I also listed starting class promptly, reading stories regularly to my students, introducing and encouraging letter writing, utilizing oral reading and writing in the content areas, eliminating the use of the SRA kits, building on the student schemata (what they already knew).

I listed inviting people to come to my classroom and tell us stories, allowing five second think time after asking a question and after the student gave their answer, requiring each student to have a folder for new words, meanings, using it in context. Some other things I listed were utilize Readers Digest “Building Word power” for additional vocabulary building, use a word bank, have a word of the day, plug decoding skills into vocabulary, and there were many more.

Looking back at them now is fascinating. Many of them were successful activities that I used and refined for many years after first writing about them. Others just disappeared or were replaced with something else. Another time I will go into more detail on some of these.

Young Writer's Column

There is a notation from April 30, 1982, that I want to check with the Mt. Pleasant News about a young people’s column. Then on June 2, I note that I have approval from Roger Williams from the school district and Bill Epperheimer, editor of the newspaper, for a monthly column of children’s writing. Roger, Sue Wilson, a junior high teacher and Dave Brown, a high teacher agree to help with the selection of writing to be published.

The project lasted for three years. I saved every column in a folder and still have them. Each column begins with the introduction I wrote at the time:

The intent of this column is two-fold. First it offers the beginning author an audience larger than his/her teacher or immediate family. Young writers work hard if they know many people will be reading their writing. Second, readers have the opportunity to catch a brief glimpse inside the head of our young people.

The stories are often simple, but always refreshing. Reading these stories might remind you of your childhood or give you an opportunity to meet some of our young people in a new way.

From time to time throughout the school year we hope to publish student writing. It should be an enjoyable experience for both the reader and the writer.

I saw this as a way to inspire young writers, engage parents and the public, and generally raise the level of awareness about the power of writing. I, secretly, hoped teachers would start having students do more writing. Many of my colleagues were very open about not teaching writing or even allowing their students time to write. They just didn’t see it as important.

I knew if parents saw the writing of other children in the paper they would want to see their own children’s writing there, too. The parent pressure would ultimately produce more writing. The first column, published in the Mt. Pleasant News on November 18, 1982, had nine pieces of elementary student writing. It was a huge hit with parents and the general public.

The next month we published high school writing and then junior high writing in January and back to elementary writing in February. We had eight columns that first year.

As time went by it got harder and harder to get teachers to submit student writing. I felt guilty just using my own students’ writing all the time and pieces from the same few teachers who submitted them all the time. I was frustrated with many of my colleagues. For whatever reason some of them just refused to participate. Maybe it was jealousy over the success and attention of the project or maybe it was something else. I don’t know, but even some of my close colleagues refused to participate.

Sometimes teachers can be very narrow in focus. I can say that because I was that way to. It’s both good and bad. Good because they are deeply involved in what they are doing in their classrooms. Bad because they sometimes miss the forest for the trees.

Graduate school, teaching and other projects got in the way of continuing the project after three years. The newspaper wanted to continue, community members asked me about it, and the district administration supported it.

Gathering the pieces and organizing them took time. Even though teachers were supposed to submit them typed they seldom did so that was left to me. I urged teachers to continue submitting their student writing directly to the newspaper. That got me out of the middle. Some did for a while but eventually it disappeared.

Statistical Methods

Sooner or later every graduate student has to take the dreaded Statistical Methods. Many put it off until the end of their program and, I suppose, many never finish their program because they are afraid to take the class. Sometimes advisors suggest taking it early to see if you are up to snuff for the program or just so you have it out of the way and don’t have to worry about it. My advisor suggested I take it early I hope for the latter reason.

I had talked to many graduate students who had audited the class the first time they took it. We met one lady who had audited it four times. At stake was being able to stay in the program. Getting a “C” or below probably meant you would not get to complete the graduate program.

Larry McNabb, John Roederer, and I enrolled in the class in January of 1982. Our theory was that if we took it together and studied together we could get through. 1982 was a snowy winter and we missed the first class because the roads to Iowa City were drifted shut. The second Saturday morning we had the same problem. We were pretty discouraged! John dropped out because he thought we would be to far behind to catch up.

The third Saturday was a nice clear day. Larry and I drove to Iowa and walked all over the campus looking for the class with no success. At that point I was ready to drop out. Larry called the instructor during the week and explained our dilemma. I called him, too, and he encouraged both of us to continue in the class even though we had now missed three full morning sessions. The instructors name was H. D. Hoover and he was head of Iowa Tests of Basic Skills, an internationally famous man in the world of statistics and assessment.

So, we joined the class for the 4th session. Hoover was an extraordinary teacher! He was careful in his explanations and a great storyteller. Sometimes his stories were so engaging that is was easy to lose the statistic principal he was trying to illustrate with the story. I studied harder for this course than any I had taken before. I was determined to figure out the mysteries of statistics and sometimes read the assigned chapters in the book five or six times. I did every sample problem I could get my hands on.

Two more weeks into the class and we had our first test. It was tough. We were given a short break in the middle to go to the restroom and get a drink. There were many complaints about it in the restroom even though we weren’t supposed to talk about it. I went home feeling like I had done well on it but wasn’t sure.

We got the test back at the next class. I got an “A” and had the second highest score in the class. I was thrilled. Larry was down the list a ways with a “B” and a little disappointed. We went over the test in class and I was selected to explain how I got two of the problems correct since I was the only one in the group that did. I was honored and empowered! I was convinced I could handle this graduate college stuff!

I continued to do well even when the course got tougher. I scored well on the second and final tests and ended up with a “B” for the course. I was on my way!

More Poems and Prayers and Weird Things

“Hope is a little girl finding a bird’s egg and knowing it won’t hatch, but hoping that some way, some how, by some sort of miracle it will.”

I don’t know what inspired the above but I have believed in miracles for a long time. It’s really because I have lived them.

“Around about the dawn of man
There came a gentle rumble across the land

It grew and grew to strength untold
Then like a flower it did unfold

A gush of air, a bright light
Life exploded with all its might!”

Hmmm…

Some prose…
“There is a person inside myself that bounces from extreme to extreme of my mind. Oh, if only I could stay in the middle.”

And some poetry…
“Myself, inside me
Confined by conscience bound skull
Bouncing from extreme to extreme
Revealing the outer limits of personality
And seldom my real self.”

Entry from May 11, 1981 – “As we drove by IWC this morning bringing me to school, Becky said, “They get out of school pretty soon.” Heather (age 7 at the time) looked at the kids walking to class and said, “Get out of school? How early do they get up?” It was really funny but it kind of hurt Heather’s feelings when we all laughed.”

In the fall of 1981 I was thinking about ways to help my students remember what each punctuation mark is for. I considered having students in groups make giant copies of each mark and become experts on that particular mark and share what they knew with the rest of the class. Although I don’t remember for sure, I think we did that at least once.

What I do remember is that out of this idea the Punctuation Players evolved. I wrote a short play called “The Tragic Story of Penrod Period.” It was humorous play and each punctuation mark was a character in the play. My students did it every year until I left teaching. I still have videotapes of one or two of the productions.

In December of 1981 I wrote that a student brought enough lumps of coal that each student in my class could have one. It was near Christmas and someone had a reference to receiving a “lump of coal’ for Christmas and most of the students, to my surprise, had no idea what a lump of coal was. I don’t remember who the student was or where they had gotten the coal.

The last entries in the second journal are from January of 1982. I write that the weather has been cold, snowy and windy. One day it was 25 below zero. We missed the first two Mondays of January because of the snow.

That journal took me from Christmas of 1980 into January of 1982 so it was used just barely over a year. The quotes, original writing, thoughts, dreams and frustrations chronicle my life during that period. The germs of thoughts and ideas were started and beginning to evolve. Looking back now, knowing where those thoughts lead me makes reading the journal personally fascinating!

Renaissance

Participation in the Southeast Iowa Writing Project propelled me into many things. As I read that second journal I realize it is just churning with ideas. It was a time of a renaissance of my mind. I was reflecting on my teaching, writing letters, submitting articles, dreaming about going to graduate school and much more.

I had, up to that time, thought the graduate school option just wasn’t there for me. My academic record was not all that good and I didn’t typically do to well on tests. The Graduate Record Exam (GRE) was required for entry and the College of Education at the University of Iowa had high standards for acceptance. In those days they had a nationally highly respected program and graduates were considered the cream of the crop. I thought I would be naive to think that I could do well on the test let alone get in.

On March 27, 1981, I wrote: “I took the GRE last Saturday morning at Iowa City. I didn’t feel very good about it after I was done. I don’t think I did very well. I hope it’s not a major factor in my acceptance to graduate school. If it is, I suppose I will have to take it again.”

I filled out the application for graduate school and waited. On May 14, I received word that I was accepted at Iowa as a graduate student in the M.A. in education program. I was surprised and even thought they might have made a mistake. I originally wanted in the program because I wanted to take classes and that opened the door to that opportunity. Completing the program seemed too distant to even think about at first but slowly that dream crept into my head. Having an M.A. would open the door to more opportunities for our family and I liked the thought of being able to put M.A. after my name.

Iowa accepted most of the courses I had taken so that gave me a good start. My advisor was Dick Shepardson. He was a kind and generous fellow. He had great knowledge of classroom management and was an expert on cooperative learning. We discovered we had a lot in common. He had been an elementary teacher and was an avid arrowhead hunter. We became friends and even hunted arrowheads together one time. He was a strong supporter during my entire time at Iowa.

I also became friends with Jack Bagford. He was a professor in the department and specialized in the teaching of reading. He authored several books and was nationally know for his expertise. He, too, was an arrowhead hunter and joined us once when we hunted. I took a couple classes from him before I took any from Shepardson. I really became intrigued about the teaching of reading and couldn’t get enough of it.

I decided to make my focus general elementary education with an emphasis on reading. I didn’t think I would ever be a school administrator so I didn’t take any courses in that area until much later.

Response

The overwhelming response I got to my letters asking authors to offer advice to young writers inspired me to write to others. What started out to be an inquiry to few suddenly involved many.

On of the things we learned about in the Southeast Iowa Writing Project (SWIP) was that the use of the red pen was counterproductive. It put a damper on writing and discouraged many to not write at all. SIWP suggested that in response to student writing you focus on what the writer was doing right and the time will come to work on polishing up what was wrong with the writing. Grammar and spelling could be taught in the context of the student’s writing.

Every writer longs for response to what they have written. They want to know that someone read it and agreed or disagreed with them, someone laughed, or someone cried when they read their writing. Absent the promise of some kind of response a lot of writing wouldn’t have happened. Oh, I am sure there are some exceptions. Writers may not want or expect response to their reflective journals but generally they do want it for almost everything else.

The response I was looking for when I wrote letters to authors was advice for my students and boy, did I get it! That prompted me to write to others and the collection was born. But, there was more! When I saw and felt how powerful letter writing was for me, how it made me want to write more, I realized it would work the same way for my students.

I began collecting addresses of sports teams and figures. I bought an address book full of the addresses of TV and movie stars. I collected addresses of politicians and public figures. The next step was to take the students through a lesson on letter writing emphasizing the form a letter takes and, of course, the importance of following all the rules so the reader is sure the get the writer’s message. Suddenly, spelling and the other rules had a real purpose. I let each person choose to whom they wanted to write. Everyone sent out one letter and we waited. It was not long before the magic began to happen!

With in a week or two students had received a reply. It worked like wild fire. Other students wanted a similar response. Hayden Fry wrote personal letters to everyone one who wrote him. George Raveling sent autographed posters of the Hawkeye basketball team. Dan Gable did the same. It was all from sports teams but I will say they were very responsive. Students wrote to authors of their favorite books.

They wrote to celebrities and others. Suddenly they were asking me for stamps almost everyday. I didn’t provide it until I had read the letter and looked over the envelope to make sure they were in good order. I had two students who wrote to presidential candidates and received good personal responses. George H. Bush actually read aloud one of the letters in a speech and another invited the student to a rally.

The bottom line is the kids were empowered to write by writing and response. The students could directly connect to writing for a purpose. Many students told me years afterward that they saved and cherished the responses they got. I did, too! My classes continued to write letters the rest of my years as a teacher. I gave presentations at conferences about the effectiveness of letter writing as a tool to get more writing from their students and increase their comprehension skills.

Advice to Young Writers

Journaling prompted an abundance of ideas about teaching, professional growth, and several others areas. I am amazed as I go back and read about ideas I had that grew to something significant. It is interesting knowing how it turned out and how an idea or thought developed.

One of the most fascinating ideas is a collection of letters from over 200 writers offering their advice to my students. It was from a time when most writing instruction centered around grammar and spelling and very little on what the writer had to say. Those that pushed that approach believed that you couldn’t be a writer until you mastered all of the skills. The trouble with teaching writing was that the kids never got around to doing much writing because they were doing worksheet after worksheet on grammar or taking spelling tests.

Even though research did and continues to support the notion that there is no correlation between grammar skills and writing traditionalists insisted what should be taught. I wondered what real successful writers would say is important. Few mentioned grammar and not one mentioned spelling. I collected the letters and published them in a book I titled “Advice to Young Writers.” I gave away hundreds of them after I sold enough of them to pay for the printing. The area education agency was so impressed with it that they published it a second time at no cost to me.

What they did say ran counter to current thought. Things like “Read about what you don’t know and write about what you do,” came from the great writer Arthur Miller. That was the gist of many of the responses. Many of the writers focused on persistence and the need to do a lot of writing. Erma Bombeck said “Write and keep at it. Nothing is too puny or too small.”

Norman Bridwell offered, “ First, get the words and ideas down on paper as fast as you can. Then go back and polish the phrases, and check for spelling, punctuation and proper structure.” Many echo that basic theme! It is exactly the opposite of the way we were teaching kids to write. We had kids so paralyzed worrying about doing it right that they didn’t do it at all.

Beverly Cleary said, “The best advice I can give to young writers is to read, listen, observe, write and try to find your own voice instead of imitating the work of others.” Many others mentioned the importance of reading a lot. Annie Dillard said “don’t think of yourself as a writer, don’t think of yourself at all. Just read everything and learn everything about the world from books. The writing will take care of itself, if you read enough. Cheers!”

Some wrote long detailed responses. Some said very little and some said they were too busy or charged for their advice. Even today I am impressed with the response and should do more with them. That may end up being a project for me sometime in the future.

Writing Class

I have met Gwendolyn Brooks twice. She was a great African American poet from Chicago. Her autograph, dated February 26, 1981, is inside the back cover of my second journal. Both times I met her at Iowa Wesleyan College.

The first time was in the chapel on campus. It was in the evening and I was one of very few Caucasians in attendance. After it was over I went to the stage to shake her hand. When I did she held onto my hand and looked me in the eye and said “Why are you here?” I said she was a great poet and I came to hear her. She said, “Langston Hughes is a great poet. I am just a writer.”

The second time I met her I was teaching a writing class through Southeastern Community College. The class usually met at the high school in my old English classroom. I am sure some of my former English teachers would have turned over in their graves if they had found out I was teaching a writing class. The evening Gwendolyn Brooks was reading at the Iowa Wesleyan College library we met there instead, and the class listened to her poetry. I loved it! I am not sure the class did?

The first time I taught the class with another person. After that I taught it own my own. That first time the guy teaching with me missed many of the classes and never came prepared. I figured after that that if I was going to do all the work I might as well get all the money so I taught it on my own. The other guy made it easy because he moved to Colorado.

I, too, struggled with the class. There are only so many activities you can do and then they need to get down to writing. No writing means no sharing and discussion, which translate into a boring two and a half hours.

I was always disappointed that some people would just show up and expect to be entertained the entire time. In a class like that the writing of the participants becomes the contents of the course.

I asked everyone to keep a journal. I assured them I would not collect them and never ask them to share anything they didn’t want to share. Sometimes I would give them long diatribes on why they should be writing things down. If they wanted to be a writer they had to write and one of the easy things was to write about what was going on in your life.

One participant was going through a bitter divorce and took my encouragement to heart. At the beginning of one session she told everyone about how many pages she had written in her journal and how cathartic it had been for her to get that stuff down on paper. Later, though, when I cautioned the group about no writing anything down they wouldn’t share with their mother or their children that same person opened her journal and tore out several pages.

A New Journal

There is a magic to writing. It is something I have to do, need to do, want to do. I’m just not sure...I am not sure why it is? It has been that way for a long time. Maybe I inherited it from my mother? It could be that the story just must get out or it could be something else. So often I don't know where I am going when I start and that's the magic part. It just comes out. Robert Frost said, "I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering." The fascinating part is that it wouldn't have come out, been magic, if I hadn’t starting writing in the first place. I often wonder how many things or great stories go untold for want of a writer to tell them?

I have always thought it amusing that so many experts spend so much time mulling over what they think the author might have been trying to say when the author didn’t know that himself/herself until after having written. What’s more important is what does the text mean to you?

Becky gave me a new journal for Christmas in 1980. My first one was full so it was perfect timing. It is full of interesting details about our lives in the early 1980s. Sometimes I clipped a newspaper article or wrote something on a loose piece of paper and stuck it between the pages of a journal. Coming upon them now as I read the older journals is a great discovery.

One of those pieces of paper in this journal has a list of the elements of writing on one side and on the other side an interesting musing:

“The songs and poems bring to mind a thousand thoughts as they pass by. I think I must rise out of a protected childhood. One rich with positive experiences and very little, if any, bad experience, at least as far as my home life is concerned. My parents accepted and encouraged me no matter how bad I did in school. Somehow, they instilled in me a sort of persistence that doesn’t recognize failure. It’s kind of a “not knowing when your beaten” attitude that has carried me through many experiences. As I look back on many of those experiences now I wonder why I just didn’t give up. The same attitude has probably gotten me in more trouble than I needed, too.”

I don’t know what led up to me making this personal discovery at that time, but I am glad I wrote about it. It seems very true for me, even today. That is not the case with everything I find in the old journals. I have clearly moved on from some things. I guess the goal of writing at anytime is to tell the truth, as you know it.

Writing is a forced meditation about a topic and I think it is through that meditation that the discoveries come. Reading is a meditation, too, but just not as intense. Your mind can actually wander when you are reading and still not miss much of the text. That is not true of writing. If your mind wanders when writing your writing usually wonders with it.

Finishing Up the First One

80s08 Finishing Up the First One

My journal entry of May 13, 1980, says I had my school physical and the doctor said I had high blood pressure. He also said I was an “extremely likely candidate for a double hernia." That was 28 years ago and I had bilateral hernia repair last August. Wish I would have had him do it then.

I am still in my first journal and need to move on to the rest of the 80s. It just means I am leaving out a lot and can come back and write about this stuff another time.

This first journal is full of reflections about my teaching and planning for next year. It ultimately had a tremendous impact on me as a teacher and as a person, I think, too.

I painted four houses that summer along with teaching junior high summer school. We continued to sell nightcrawlers and I took a three-week archeology course at Toolesboro. We camped there and one night there was a severe storm. We were lucky to get through it. We were in our camper and stayed dry but the other tents were torn out of the ground by the high wind.

Angie and Heather will remember that as a hot stormy summer. I am not sure whether they enjoyed the camping and archeology or not. My parents, Don Young, Claudia Streeter and a few others came to visit us during that dig. I found it very enjoyable and hope to do it again sometime. That course allowed me to advance to BA plus 15 on the district’s salary schedule.

That fall I taught a writing course at the minimum-security prison on Saturday mornings. When I read all the stuff I was doing I think I must have been nuts. By fall I was taking care of Ernie Hayes swimming pool, painting the trim on his house. I was still on the Hope Haven Board and on the Session at church.

That fall I did a session on writing across the curriculum at the state social studies conference in Des Moines. It got rave reviews and an article in the Iowa Department of Public Instruction Newsletter. I was thrilled! For several years after that I was quoted several times. The best compliment, though, came a few years later at an English conference when the presenter passed out my article as an excellent example of what can be done with writing across the curriculum.

Oh, yes, I was still teaching adult Sunday school and teaching full time and, believe it or not, driving a school bus from time to time. I drove it for my own field trips and for the district to transport teachers to the AEA Fall Conference in Burlington.

This journal is full of diatribes about issues that I thought were important, prayers about hopes and dreams and ordinary ramblings. It is hard to categorize much of it. I wonder what my children and grandchildren will make of it someday. No doubt, they will think I was a raving lunatic. Odds are I will be long gone by then so I guess it doesn’t matter.
You are nothing if not a story. It’s up to you how good that story is.

Welcome Home Johnny

My February 16, 1980, journal entry makes a note that I should write about all the things that schools have taken over for parents and call it “Welcome Home Johnny.” I don’t recall exactly what led up to me thinking this was something to write about but I do remember thinking many times the parents and the general publics perception was that we should do everything for the kids.

The same problem is pervasive today. I remember hearing many people, even my parents commenting, “Why don’t they teach that in schools?” when someone came up short of what was expected of them. It could be anything from common courtesy to how to ride a bike, table manners, counting change, fire safety, or any of hundreds of other things. I remember feeling frustrated that it was impossible for teachers and schools to cover everything.

We added and continue to add things that need to be covered often, but nothing is ever taken away. Parents have abdicated much of their responsibility. We have to teach kids sex education because their parents don’t. The same is true with health education, nutrition, bicycle safety, stranger danger, how to behave in public, how to pay bills, and even how to wash their hands.

Every group from the National Rifle Association, to the Egg Producers (Also the pork, beef, turkey, and organic producers) to dentists, fire departments, police departments and every other group you can think of has their own curriculum they want taught in the schools. They are incredulous when we turn them down. They can’t understand why we wouldn’t want to take a few days and cover their pet topic. There is no denying that they may be important but there are only so many hours in the school day and the basic curriculum is difficult to cover in the time we have.

Even now a group that has something they want us to teach approaches me almost weekly. This week it was the fire department that wanted 6 days in the junior high program to teach a values based fire safety program and a Habitat for Humanity representative who wants the schools to teach a financial education program because he encounters so many people who don’t know anything about taking care of their money. Both are, no doubt, valuable but how could we ever work them in?

As a fourth grade teacher, I developed a systematic way of covering everything the district expected me to cover and documented it with a yearlong plan. I referred to it often to make sure I was about where I should be and then planned accordingly. It obviously annoyed me when things came up that disrupted that plan. Elementary people are schedule and clock driven and frustrated when things don’t play out the way they should. When I look at my old weekly lesson plans there are arrows all over the place indicating things forwarded to the next day or week. I tended to over plan most of the time.

If schools take over all the parent responsibilities maybe school is home for some kids?