Personal Values

What were some of the values and attitudes toward education expressed in your family? How have these influenced your thinking and your practice (as a student)?

I've worked on this prompt before and I always wish I had a clearer sense of the values expressed in my family. The things I remember are implicit values, those shown to us by example. I remember my parents as literate people. My father was a banker and had an Associate degree from (then) Marshall College. He was an articulate man, a reader. My mother was a high school graduate, but when I was in elementary school I remember her taking courses at the local high school that were offered by a nearby community college. She was intelligent, articulate, and also a reader. She was also an artist...a painter...and later in her life she went to work for an art museum as the director...a place where her natural intelligence and artistic sense came together in a perfect blend. We received the Reader's Digest Condensed books, the Reader's Digest, National Geographic, and another finance magazine but I cannot recall its name. Virtually none of my aunts or uncles had graduated from college, very few had even attended.

I always did quite well in school, don't ever remember any serious discussions about grades in my elementary years. College was never discussed, just assumed. I went to a very small school (my class in high school had 64 students) through my sophomore year. Since the school was so small, there were really only two options...vocational (those kids took shop and mechanical stuff) and college prep...there was no in-between. I didn't necessarily realize how well I was being educated until we moved between my sophomore and junior years. This time I was in a much larger school (my class had about 365 students) and I found it to be a little easier than my former school. I went into the college prep curriculum and graduated with a high ranking in my class (convinced I would have been higher if I'd gone to the second school for the whole four years!).

In addition to my family, there were some significants points of light regarding education and learning along the way for me. Elsie Shively, the school librarian at my elementary school and at the public library (she split her time there), encouraged my appetite for reading. She often would put aside books for me that she thought I'd like and she always encouraged me to read beyond my grade level (I did my first book report in fourth grade on an adult work of nonfiction called "The Healing Woods" -- my fourth grade teacher didn't quite know what to make or me or that report). I literally read hundreds of books each summer...hauling 9-10 home about every 3-4 days. Next came Mrs. Sherman, my high school math teacher at the small high school I attended. She stood out to me because of her love for math and the way she treated the girls as equals in her class. Mr. Gormley, my physics teacher at the new high school, made physics come alive for me, encouraged us to explore alternative topics outside the prescribed curriculum, and gave equal respect and time for girls and boys. Mrs. Deibel, my chemistry teacher, gave me my first C. My dad grounded me for six weeks for that little breach! In spite of the C, she stands out to me because she so patiently tried to help me understand the concept of the mole and I never, ever could get it...the whole concept was too abstract for me. (It wasn't until I had audiology in college and learned about the decibel that I realized what the heck she had been talking about with the mole!) Dolores Johnson, whom I've referred to in another writing, because she taught me what it means to be a teacher and what it means to keep questioning, asking, reading, writing, and learning.

I hold these people up, even Mrs. Deibel, because they represent to me the best that education has to offer. They glorified and honored an academic life...a life of learning. They reinforced the values my parents displayed in their lives, and they encouraged and nurtured me to go after what I needed. It's possible my students understand who I am better by knowing these things about me. I understand myself better by thinking about these things. I had forgotten what a voracious reader I really was...I had forgotten how it felt to be on equal footing with the males in the class...I had forgotten how it felt to not be able to "grok" (come to know) something...I sometimes forget how important it is to have someone believe in you.