Last night, Talk Story-Tales told in Winter gave a brief reading at the Lambertville Library. We were asked to describe what work we did and a little about our background. After the reading was a question and answer session, in which I shared that at college (undergraduate school) I had majored in storytelling and Children's Literature. How could this be? Well, at San Francisco State University it was the first year that the Ryan Act was implemented (Leo Ryan, later murdered at Jonestown)--this teacher preparation program was to my memory curriculum based and these topics were my choice having been an actress. How wonderful, our major instructor majored in Children's Literature at Northwestern University (Can no longer find this major)-our course were so interesting with an emphasis on storytelling of all kinds- I remember my final, overly ambitions, reducing Wagner's Ring for Young Children. Concurrently, myself and several classmates took classes at the Reading Improvement Center where we learned how to teach reading. Putting these skills together we designed programs for incarcerated teens, and for an experimental school. These projects, continued after we graduated on to other things. I feel so fortunate to have had that focused curriculum background which has served me so well as I continued to study at Teachers College - Columbia University for my doctorate--and today teaching Literacy and Language Development. While I was focusing on my areas of interests others were focusing on art, science, mathematics..I believe as specialists those of us fortunate enough to attend college at that time in all likelihood made significant contributions to our students.. excuse the diatribe.
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