Introduction by Mr. John E. Stratford, Teacher
When I began teaching in a middle school some
years ago, I was afraid most of the time.
I came to school afraid, I stayed afraid much of the day, and when the
final bell rang, and all those wild middle school kids streamed out to the
buses, I felt such relief that I nearly wept.
Why was I afraid? Oh, it wasn’t for any physical reason. Sure, there were some fierce eighth grade
boys, but I wasn’t really worried about that.
Kids didn’t attack teachers, not in those days, not, anyway, in Spoon
River Middle School in rural northeastern Ohio.
By the way, I made up the name “Spoon
River Middle School,” and I’ll explain why in just a minute. But first, here’s why I was afraid during my
early years: I didn’t know what I was
doing. And I was terrified that the
students would find out.
Oh,
I was a college graduate. I had majored
in American literature, and I knew some things about writing (or at least I
thought I did). And I’d done all I’d
needed to do to earn my teaching certificate.
But I didn’t really know how
to teach middle schoolers. I’d done my
student teaching in a high school—eleventh graders. Most of those kids had been pretty
serious. They knew the importance of the
next year or so. Some wanted to go to
college or trade school. Others just
wanted to be able to interview well for a job.
And so most of them pretty much tried to do the best they could.
But
when I finished my student teaching and began looking for a job, I found
nothing available in any high schools in the area—and I wanted to stay in
northeastern Ohio. I didn’t have any
family there anymore—or many friends or any lovers—but even as a young man I
was pretty … settled. I’d lived there
most of my life; I didn’t want to go anywhere else.
As
it turned out, I got one interview—at Spoon River Middle School in Spoon River,
Ohio. Eighth grade English. I wore the new blue suit my parents had given
me for graduation; I was ten minutes early; I carried with me a yellow legal
pad. I tried to look serious,
professional, prepared.
I
needn’t have bothered. The
Superintendent of Schools in Spoon River had been in the Lions Club with my dad
for years. The job was mine. All I needed to do was show up for the
interview dressed, not naked, keep my fingers out of my nose, try not to drool
or moan or to say anything startling—like “Eighth grade girls can be pretty
hot, can’t they?”
So
there I was, age 21, a teacher. I spent
the ensuing summer doing two things: 1. thinking about my classes; 2. trying not to think about my classes. I was simultaneously excited and terrified,
you see. And that summer, time
accelerated, the way it always does when you don’t want it to.
All
too soon, classes started. And I was
busier than ever before—in my life. I
had more than 150 students a day each of my first few years. And most of them were not of the sit-down-and-be-attentive
variety. By the weekends, all I wanted
to do was sleep—which is pretty much what I did.
In
those early years I was teaching the way I’d been taught. (Go with what you know!) Lots of grammar and mechanics. Some stories and poems from our literature book. Some writing assignments. I found out pretty quickly, though, that
writing assignments were a killer—so many hours
of grading for 150 students.
But
I stumbled upon something that in a way saved my life—and in another way
brought about the book you’re now reading.
I
started setting aside writing time in class every week. Free writing time. Well,
sort of free. Sometimes I would tell
the kids to write a poem—or a letter—or a story—or a memory—or a dream. You know.
Just to see what they’d come up with.
I kept all these writings in folders—a folder for each kid—and once a
marking period, I would flip through the folders, reading a little, seeing what
they were up to. And give them a grade
and a brief comment. These pieces show a lot of thought, Bob. Or Why
do you write about baseball all the time, Tim? Or Your
grandmother sounds like a really interesting woman, Sue. That sort of thing.
After
a while, I noticed that quite a few of the kids were using their folders to
hold more than just the writing they did in my class. Other things appeared. Notes.
Pieces they’d written at home—or in other classes, or in earlier years. It was odd.
I
started a file, too, though I kept it to myself. In it I put notes I’d found on the floor,
writing that kids had tossed in my trash—or left in the printer tray. Odds and ends.
And
that first summer, I took it all home.
When I was beginning to recover from that first very difficult year (in
mid-July or so), I took the files out and began looking at their contents a
little more carefully, and I noticed a number of things. Lots of kids had just sort of gone through
the motions—writing something because they had
to. No surprise. (I’d done a lot of that sort of thing when I
was a student.)
But
there were other kids who’d clearly written about things that mattered to them,
had written with passions of all sorts (love, hatred, anger, sorrow, and so
on). I even saw a sort of story
emerging—or, better, stories, stories
that sometimes intertwined, sometimes not.
I pulled out the pieces that seemed most—what?—meaningful? Honest?
Unique? Typical? I don’t know.
But the ones that appealed to me in some way—or revealed something that
surprised or moved me.
And
now we get to the “Spoon River” part:
One
of the books I had liked in college was a collection of poems by Edgar Lee
Masters (1868–1950) called Spoon River
Anthology. He’d grown up in a small
town in Illinois (Lewiston), a town which greatly influenced his outlook and
writing. Later, he wrote a series of
poems in the form of monologues and epitaphs from fictional people in the
fictional town of Spoon River, and those poems give readers an idea of what
life and people were like in that small, rural place.
And
so I got an idea from Edgar Lee Masters.
Just as his poems revealed the attitudes of the residents of Spoon
River, so the pieces my students had
written would give readers a good understanding of life in our middle school, a
school whose name I changed to “Spoon River” in honor of Masters.
So
here they are, such as they are. I’ve
not done anything with the words the
kids wrote, but I have straightened things up.
Spelling. Punctuation. You know.
But the words belong to the eighth graders of Spoon River. And these are their stories, their thoughts,
their lives …
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