I never thought of myself as being good in English. I always felt I read slower, wrote more messy, had worse spelling, and didn't have as good of vocabulary as the other students in my classes. So I went into my first college English class without too much hope of doing all that well. I made the mistake of taking this class at 8am in the morning which compounded the problem of not wanting to get up that early in the morning. Consequently, I ended up taking the class a second time.
The second time around happened to be with the same random graduate student I had the first time around. This did not make me happy, because in his eyes, I was not a good student. It turned out that many students did not survive his first class and he had changed the way the class was conducted as a result. The second time around there were different writing categories with different assignments that fit into the different categories. The rule was that a certain number of assignments in each of the categories would constitute an A in the class. This was much more to my liking.
I still didn't show up to class all that much, but I showed up enough to get enough of these assignment sheets to complete my final portfolio. I asked permission to have the papers that needed to have a rough draft corrected by someone to be done by someone outside of the class. He said that would be fine. So I had a friend make the corrections and I spent my time in the computer lab typing up the various assignments. It all seemed too easy. I was very nervous when I turned in my final portfolio and I went to collect it from the teacher on the very first day possible. He made no comments at all, but I got an A in the class. I asked him why he was grading on quantity rather than quality and he said the point was to get me to write and that is what happened.
Once I had decided to change careers from working in the business world to becoming a teacher, I decided I should see if I would be able to succeed in online classes. They seemed the only way to move forward while I was working grave yard shift at Intel. I saw an ad for the Institute of Children's Literature. I turned in my application with a sample of a children's story I had wanted to write since I was little. They actually liked it and I was accepted in the program. I enjoyed the lessons very much while I was able to keep up with the work and my job responsibilities. The last piece of writing I did for this program was to write a middle school mystery for a writing contest. It turned out that I won third place and received $250 and a certificate for my efforts.
That correspondence course led me to believe I would be able to handle online classes, and I was off into my new career of being a teacher. I wrote papers for classes, but I didn't seem to enjoy it very much. As a teacher at a charter school, I needed a way to help my students with their writing, so I searched for different writing websites. I decided on a whim to turn in some of the poetry I had written many years ago to a poetry writing contest. This led me to find a website to post my other writing and receive feedback. So I am at the point in my life where I want to write more and I am considering completing that children's writing course I started so many years ago.
FanStory.com is where I have posted some of my writing.
Poetry.com is where I have entered into a poetry contest.
The Institute of Children's Literature is where I started my correspondence course in writing children's literature.
Page last updated 02/04/07