For about eight years, I was the fourth-grade writing teacher in an elementary school in Las Vegas. Our principal had decided to departmentalize the fourth and fifth grades because during that time Nevada’s Big Test included a writing section and she felt that having a class focused on that skill would be useful to our students (and the scores…naturally.) For me, it was simply terrific! I got to focus on a topic that I loved, and I could incorporate the Social Studies curriculum into it, to help the students learn information and learn how to communicate what they knew. The other teachers in my grade level were delighted that they wouldn’t have to deal with teaching writing because, like many teachers I know, they didn’t feel comfortable teaching that subject.

But, as some people are born with the skills to play ball, or sing, or fix motors, I apparently was born with the skills to write coherently. I’ve had a few stories and articles published in magazines and newspapers over the course of my adult life. It is a hobby, I earned my paycheck in the fourth-grade classroom. But I love writing. One of my grandfathers only completed the eighth grade in formal schooling. He lived on a farm forty miles from the high school, and it wasn’t possible for him to board with someone in “town” so he could attend. However, he was not at all an “uneducated” person. He was an avid reader, he wrote hundreds of letters to friends, and could give speeches or a sermon that left no doubt that he was a knowledgeable gentleman. So, I feel that I inherited his thinking and communicating abilities, but was also gifted with the chance to learn composition skills.