Your Best Read? You Have to Be A Reading Role Model!!!

What book are you reading right now? I'm reading my training manual to become a Group Fitness Instructor put out by the American Council on Exercise to prepare to take my test this August before I take a graduate course in Introduction to Cinema Studies from George Mason University to self-renew my license to teach.

I know - you're thinking - she's retired, is she crazy?  She just met a nice woman at a group meeting who has ten years left and she wants to change professions or find another way to use her skill set and here you are getting back in the game.

It has to do with being a storyteller I think.  I have one more tattoo to get on my right ankle.  It will be a tribal raven. I just have to design the branch.

The raven is a storytelling bird, as well as a trickster. The raven is the first bird up in the morning flying through the sky to tell all the other birds the story and that is how I taught.  I told stories - not all of the time, but if the time was right, some tale would jump right out of my mouth and I couldn't do a thing about it.

One time, I even had my students convinced that I had been abducted by aliens.  I told them I had taken my poodle, Sugar, out for her nightly back yard stroll and lost track of time.  I had looked up and a very bright light filled the sky.  I always took Sugar out at 9:15 pm. and the next time I looked at my watch, it was 9:30 pm.  The next morning, I noticed a large lump in my thumb - it didn't hurt - it was just annoying.  I went to the doctor and he didn't know what it was even after taking an x-ray.  He said he could remove it, but I might not be able to use my thumb as well as I would like.  I decided to let well enough alone.

The kids all (well, almost all) wanted to feel the lump which was a harmless bone spur (I guess - that was the doctor's guess).  Word spread like wild fire and students from all over my middle school came to feel the lump in my thumb. I never said I was abducted by aliens, the kids just thought I had been.  Parents even called the school. Fortunately, my principal knew me well enough to know I was teaching units on myths and legends and was using this story to illustrate the difference - that a legend can be created from a kernel of truth.  To this day, I run in to adults (former students) who still want to think I was abducted by aliens.

So what does this have to do with what you are reading?  Hopefully, you will find the joy of giving a book talk or sharing a story or a piece of learning so that you become comfortable with the teachable moment when you pull out your tablet or book or whatever and take a few minutes to rave about something that got you inspired - passionate.  That's what students remember - the stories we tell - not our "lesson plans based on objective number 64".

Today, I learned how to modify exercises for pregnant women and it took me back to when I was pregnant with my daughter and how I had to go through 13 years of infertility treatments to have her and what a lucky woman I am to have been successful.  I also was reminded of one of my students telling me that the day I told the story of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Anderson changed her life.  We were in the bathroom of a local restaurant and she shared that she had taken her nieces, nephews, cousins and finally her own children to see the show at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.

So read, share and be a role model for your students - you never know what moral compass you are gifting them with or what passion you are igniting.  I was lucky - I got to find out that something I shared made a difference.