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The moment I learned to read happened on a bus– asking innocently what a girl was reading on her phone will do that to you. Then comes the hours and hours of discovering reading is not what I had previously hated…it was more reading dull topics in school that disgusted me. E-book after e-book and several all-nighters later, the inspiration to create something as immersing as the fanfictions I read struck me like lightning. I wanted to write something others would love to read. When I hated reading before, what I wanted to do next surprised me: learn how to write.

As I went about school, eighth grade and above, I started to meet teachers that pushed for my creativity and exploration in writing. Notable influencers, who I still remember by name, had a large role in shaping my learning to write. Getting older and eventually moving on to college, I met a substantial number of English professors, who are very dear to me, that also acted as that extra push to ignite my motivation to become a better writer.

As I think about going to the schools in Rockbridge County, I think about bringing to the table what my teachers brought to me: the key to the internal faucet of passion. This passion starts somewhere and the knob that turns it on comes from the idea that school “operates in different types of community life,” as said by Dewey (100). As teachers start seeing their students as participants to an authentic community with valuable ideas to contribute, then they can work on harvesting the creativity that naturally occurs within the student’s mind. My teachers saw me as a person, granted smaller, with concepts of my own to share.

My worries are how I will be able to navigate the very real background that these students may come from. I recognize that I came from a privileged family in which they were able to afford to live in counties with good educations. How will I conduct a lesson where my students will have different issues going on at home, possibly distracting them from the classwork at hand. In Exploring Place-and Social-Class-Based Ways of Knowing, Chea Parton mentions a time in her childhood where “other kids made fun of me for wearing the skort and shirt combo my mamaw had made my hand (27).” Regardless of social background, bullying appears in any school where children are present. On top of taking into account the home lives of my students, how will I mitigate even the smallest amount of teasing? To raise more questions, is there any way to stop all of bullying?

On another note, Parton also includes “I remember standing in the checkout line, confused as to why my mom couldn’t just write a check (27)”. While home lives are different, this also includes the economic statuses of the students in school. What does a teacher do when a child comes to class and doesn’t have money for lunch? How does a teacher come at those issues? It is going to be a journey igniting passion in Rockbridge’s young minds with the possible weight of the cruel reality already on their shoulders.

How I learned to love to read might not be the way kids today, and more specifically, children in Rockbridge classrooms, learn to love to read. With a toolbox of fantasy and magic, while also incorporating the difficult themes of life, I’m excited to bring what stories have to offer to the future adults of Rockbridge County.