Transformation Moments?
What do my second grade teacher and DreamForge magazine have in common? They both believe that there is power contained in stories.
Last week, I told you about Sister Stephanie, my first grade teacher. My second grade teacher had just as great an impact, although it took a completely different form. Physically, Miss Eileen O’Donnell was not at all like Sister Stephanie. My long-ago memory recalls her as young and slim, with short, curling, brownish-black hair. Compared to Sister Stephanie, Miss O’Donnell seemed very, very tall.
We first graders were already familiar with Miss O’Donnell because the first and second grade classrooms were next to each other and – I seem to recall – shared a connecting door. That meant if Sister Stephanie had to step away for a moment, Miss O’Donnell would be the one who supervised us. I don’t ever recall her having trouble, so her youth was no barrier to her being an authority figure.
Moving over into the Second Grade room seemed to me like a step on the road to adulthood. Miss O’Donnell was very serious about reading, basic math, and any number of other subjects. But it was in a subject that wasn’t even part of the curriculum where she had her greatest impact on me.
Although I’d only learned to read the year before, I rapidly read above my grade. Miss O’Donnell made no effort to hold me back, even though I was less than perfect in spelling and phonics. When I started outdistancing my classmates, she arranged for me to join an advanced reading group with the third graders. This arrangement was probably made easier because her sister taught the third grade. Once a day, I would walk downstairs to join Miss Patricia O’Donnell (who we referred to as Miss O’Donnell Third Grade) and her advanced readers for exciting ventures into books with chapters.
But although this arrangement saved me from boredom, this wasn’t where Miss O’Donnell Second Grade had her biggest impact. That, as with Sister Stephanie, took the shape of an unexpected gift: in this case a small burnt-orange hardcover book about ancient history. It was a comfortable size for me to hold but, unlike most of the books for children my age, it had much more print than pictures. I remember wondering if I could even read something so grown-up looking. However, I was lured in both by Miss O’Donnell’s matter-of-fact confidence that I could and by the illustrations.
These were lush full-color paintings, not the simple line drawings or cartoons common in children’s books. I don’t remember all the places and people that were featured in that book, but I do know that one of my favorites was the story of how the youth who would become Alexander the Great tamed his horse, Bucephalus. Do you know the story? The short version is that Alexander had the sense to notice that the horse no one could ride was afraid of his own shadow. Alexander turned the horse toward the sun, so he could no longer see his shadow. Then, shedding his own fluttering cloak, Alexander mounted and was able to ride the un-rideable steed. The two were inseparable from that day forth.
At a time when horses in stories (and reality, for all I know) were still routinely “broken,” and relationships between animals and humans in the “real world” were characterized by domination, not understanding, this tale about trying to understand the “other” made a huge impact on me.
I think I also read about ancient Egypt for the first time in that book as well, so Miss O’Donnell is partly responsible for my novel The Buried Pyramid. Most importantly, the little burnt-orange book taught me that history was about Story, not about dates and capital cities and the dry, abstract facts that so many classes focus on, probably to make testing easier.
Remembering how much that little burnt-orange book did for me is one of the reasons I signed on to be part of the team that’s putting together DreamForge: Tales of Hope in the Universe. Stories – fiction and non-fiction – have the power to change the individual. The individual has the power to change the world, maybe not always on a grand scale, but maybe, sometimes, just one book, one story, at a time.
Thank you, Miss O’Donnell Second Grade and Third Grade both!
