Gratitude Day 21 - Mrs. Roth and Young Adult Literature

Thursday night I went to the Hunger Games/Catching Fire double feature.  I walked out thinking that the gratitude for the day would be Katniss Everdeen because, come on.  What an amazing character, and what an amazing portrayal by Jennifer Lawrence.  Also, that dress.

However, I got behind on my blogging and as I sit down to reflect on what I was most grateful for at the end of last week, I keep going back to all the books I read in fifth grade.  Obviously, you can't be grateful for The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle if you're not grateful for Sharon Roth.

Coming out of fourth grade, life was rough for me.  The previous two years of schooling had been an awkard mix of nerdy excitement, adoration from teachers, and bullying from students.  I ended the year in a ball of anxiety and wanted to disappear from the classroom forever.  When I was placed in Mrs. Roth's class over the summer, my amazing mother sat down with my new teacher and told her simply to ignore me.  She explained to Mrs. Roth that the previous two years had been rough for me and that all I wanted was to be a normal kid.

Fifth grade was the best year of my childhood thanks to Mrs. Roth's expert teaching.  She built a classroom culture of acceptance and peace, and she encouraged all of us to love reading and writing not because we needed to get good at it, but because it was beautiful.

Every day in Mrs. Roth's class, she would read to us aloud.  After second grade, most teachers stop doing story time, and at first we thought this was strange. During reading time, we were allowed to relax, sit comfortably, and even doodle if that made us happy.  It was maybe 30 minutes of peaceful enjoyment, the pure purpose of which was to teach us that books are AMAZING.

I remember the heartbreak I felt for Georgie in The Lottery Rose, as he tried so hard to make sense of the horrible abuse he had suffered.  I began a life-long love affair with post-apocalyptic (?) fiction after hearing Mrs. Roth read about the few survivors of nuclear war in Z for Zachariah.  Though science fiction remains my least favorite genre, I loved Eva, a gripping tale of medical technology and the ethics of animal research.  But nothing, nothing, could compare to Charlotte Doyle.

From the first pages, our class became fully immersed in the high sea adventures of this teenage girl.  She was strong, independent, and morally sound.  The story included murder, sexism, racism, and cruelty.  But (spolier alert), Charlotte triumphed over all these things and held steadfast to her belief that justice should be served, even if it is a young girl who must enforce it.  Our whole class was obsessed with Charlotte Doyle.  We pretended the class was the crew, we made a round robin to overthrow the class (not out of disrespect for Mrs. Roth, but rather for the thrill of bringing fiction to life).  Jeremy and I talked about writing a screen play.

And Mrs. Roth was more than just the inspiration for my love of young adult fiction.  She taught us to pursue our own interests as a way of learning more.  She encouraged our growth into young men and women capable of critical thinking.  Mrs. Roth was there at the most awkward of times, the beginning of puberty, when Liz and I came to her with a new crush every day.  She called my tendency for quickly changing loves "the garcon du jour", and teased us gently, knowing that we were beginning to become our real selves.  She loved us each for what made us special, while at the same time understanding our need to fit in.  Plus she was downright funny.

My year with Mrs. Roth is a big part of why I became a teacher and stayed in education to become a principal.  My unspoken goal is to give as many students as possible the opportunity to interact with a teacher as excellent as Mrs. Roth.  So today, I'm grateful for Mrs. Roth and for the young adult literature she introduced me to.  I love reading and I found my life's meaning because Mrs. Roth showed me the way.