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"Those wanting footsteps guided must be moving feet."
Paraphrase - M.L.W.
Professionalism Statement -- (click or scroll)
I obtained a work permit for my first teaching job at age 15 as a swimming instructor for the Tooele City Municipal Swimming Pool in Tooele, Utah. By age 16, I had gained full coach status for both the Tooele City Girls' Racing Team and the Tooele Aquabell's Synchronized Swim Club which performed throughout the West primarily for new pool dedications or competitions. Competitions included sufficiently favorable placings in the National Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) meets held in Oakland, California and Reno, Nevada to merit an invitation for competition in the Tryouts of the Pan American Games. I was one of four coaches chosen to swim with the American Flag to the "Star Spangled Banner Anthem" at these tryouts. I was the youngest coach ever to have this honor.
I left Tooele to pursue study in Logan, Utah at Utah State University. As a student at the University, I supplemented my income while pursuing my degree by playing piano for tap, modern, and folk dance classes. I also taught Synchronized swimming for USU's Physical Education department. I completed my teaching Bachelor's degree in three winters and one summer doing my student teaching in biology. That fall I began contract teaching for the Seattle Public School District and was assigned to Monroe Junior High School in Ballard, Washington where I taught dance, team sports, and an array of interesting individual sports including gymnastics, bowling, Judo, and rope climbing. Both the school's dance team, Kaleidoscope, and the tumbling team, Figurettes, were under my direction. I dabbled in various other teaching assignments during those early marriage years doing such things as Summer Playground Director for the Seattle Recreation Department, Water Safety Trainer for the Boy Scouts of America, and Synchronized Swimming coach for Aqua Dive Private Swim club. Having became adept at marine experiences with the Boeing Sea Horse Scuba Club and the United States Power Squadron with whom I held a small craft navigator's license, I served as co-trainer for a Marine Boy Scout troop.
I left the contract teaching ranks a number of years later to pursue a Master's degree in Interior Design at Drexel Hill University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but achieved only New York Showroom status after leaving a two-thirds completed program to join the ranks of motherhood. A constantly moving husband put me in many different cities and a variety of other temporary teaching challenges such as dance instructor for Arthur Murray Dance Studios in Philadelphia, Pa., and Aquatic Program Director for the YWCA in Marietta, Georgia.
As my family grew, I eventually returned to classroom teaching in the Idaho Falls District as a tutor for Title 1-Migrant Education. My students included political refugees from Czechoslovakia, boat people from Laos, migrant field workers from Mexico, and Japanese children of exchange engineers at INEL (Idaho National Engineering Laboratory at the Department of Energy site). This exposure with English as a Second Language (ESL) gave me a whole new perspective on literacy and the role of language in Education. I was first assigned to oscillate between Hawthorne Elementary School for District 91 and Hillview Elementary School for District 93, and then moved a year later to Eagle Rock Junior High School because my certified teacher status allowed me to issue credit. Three years later, I was hired to coordinate the two-district Migrant program.
As the Migrant Program Resource Teacher/Coordinator, I provided language testing, wrote individualized programs, and trained tutors for 241 migrant children in 28 schools K-12 scattered throughout both Districts 91 and 93 in Idaho Falls. The assignment included a summer school of equal size with health screenings and recreation programs in addition to reading and writing skills. Through my coordinator years, I became dedicated to understanding literacy at all levels and found the next focus to be teaching students, particularly of ESL origin, to write.
In 1989, I left the public school system to Pilot a writing course for adult International students at a private two year college. Since this piloting effort was part-time work, I worked additionally in a health grant program administered by Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho. My job was to serve as one of eight Facilitators for the State of Idaho's Substance Abuse Program awarded to ISU by the State Department of Health and Welfare. In the two years I served, I in-serviced teachers throughout the state in five programs: "Here's Looking at You, Two", "Here's Looking at You, 2000", "School Tobacco Education Program (STEP, designed for 5th grade)", "6th Grade Alcohol and Drug Education Guide", and "Refusal Skills Training". Collective figures for our group of trainers in 1989 showed ISU issued academic credit to 936 teachers, implemented health awareness programs in 41 districts totaling 2,049 direct participants, and 23,400 students indirectly. 1990 numbers exceeded these by 25%.
Fall semester of 1990, my piloting effort with adult international students expanded from the Basic Writing course to include a second course in Cultural Competency. Teaching in the college writing ranks precipitated my exposure to conferences, publishers, and editors. In 1993 I provided an ESL point of view as a member of an Advisory Board for the text, College Writing Skills. In 1995 I participated in editing an ESL text for West Publishing in California. I have been a presenter at writing conferences including several Eastern Idaho Region Writing Conferences, the Western Region Teachers of Two Year Colleges conference, and the Western Region TYCA conference.
Before joining the college ranks, writing had been a dormant--but not new--arena for me. My earliest attempt at writing professionally was as a member of Polly's Teen Committee which provided questionnaire information for her column "Up In Polly's Room". This human interest column was carried in the monthly International Farm Journal. My first solo publication was a one paragraph writing in 1956 carried in the Farm Journal: Southern Edition. After two years with Polly, I landed my first feature article in 1959 entitled "Got a handicap?" carried in the Farm Journal: Western Edition.
Even though my professional writing went on a back burner through motherhood years, I wrote endless numbers of road shows, skits, plays, and programs for 4-H groups, or church groups. The piloting of new ideas has been a continual fascination to me, and I have been equally fascinated by the interesting paths and time frames through which my writing has traveled to touch others. Once a friend from the other side of Idaho Falls called to tell me her church group was using one of my Christmas programs, and she was surprised and pleased to see I had authored it. I asked where the group had found it to which she replied it had come from a member whose sister in Bountiful, Utah had used the program the previous Christmas.
It is really quite thrilling to see contributions pioneered in one geographic location catch on in another one. My writing of water shows for the Intermountain AAU Exhibitions in 1958 with character parts, entrances, and exits did not catch on professionally until the Ice Follies embraced the idea in 1968. Now this type of choreography is dominant in exclusive private clubs on both coastlines. While a Synchronized swimming coach, I was invited to perform a Solo routine for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints under the direction of Florence Anderson at the Deseret Gymnasium in Salt Lake City for June conference of 1957. This routine to the music "Carry On" was the focus number in a demonstration of aquatic skills recommended church-wide for a member wellness program. In 1976, I ran into this program at Treasure Mountain Scout Camp located in Idaho's Targhee Mountains. YWMIA leaders were inaugurating the program for the first time in Idaho. It had taken nearly twenty years to move from Utah to Idaho. I couldn't resist joining the opening event, the mile swim, and pushing myself to place first. I was recorded that day as the first swimmer to complete the mile swim at Treasure Mountain for the Young Women's program of Idaho almost two decades after the program had been piloted.
I have enjoyed piloting programs in various areas of athletic choreography. My student rope climbing and gymnastic exhibitions in 1962 were a pilot arena in the Seattle Public School District dictated by the lack of playing fields for team sports. When piloting these programs, I remember receiving letters from mothers accusing me of teaching their daughters to be monkeys, not ladies. Now rope climbing and gymnastics is the primary function in physical fitness programs in schools throughout the Northwest where playing fields are unavailable. Gymnastics has blossomed in this area. Yes, I love piloting. To me it is a frontier all its own. As idealistic as this sounds, I dearly love designing anything that lifts my fellow beings physically, academically, or spiritually. I love movement, and I love to see others moving in positive ways in any positive direction physically or academically.
In 1996, I was offered my latest piloting challenge, to pilot a writing class using only Internet lines. I am thrilled to be able to pilot this for my Continuing Education employer. I am over-anxious to know how this electronic teaching will progress, but I feel with technology moving so rapidly, I will no longer have to wait two decades to see progress. I envision seeing education come swiftly to those without institutional access if they desire it--even those scattered about in rural homes. This education is through what is called a virtual classroom. I am excited to be part of this virtual teaching effort. Falling into the teaching arena at such a young age has given me many wonderful experiences from which to draw, and I hope this background coupled with my own writing progress and professionalism will keep me piloting new challenges while continuing to move even further through the teaching ranks.
As a young child of four, I was stricken with Poliomyelitis during an epidemic in Utah when hospitals were saturated with children who eventually left them facial disfigured or with crippled limbs. Only a few parents experimented with an alternate treatment developed by (and named after) a Sister Kenny who recommended continual applications of hot wet woolen pads to shriveling muscles. After my six months in a hospital with only indispensable homesickness to show for it, the doctors recommended my mother pursue the Kenny treatment at home, so my bed could be given to someone who would respond to hospital care. Besides keeping me day and night in a home-bed with hot wet woolens reheated and replaced hourly on my leg, my parent's vigil was to take me for weekly check-ups, so the Salt Lake doctors could look for signs of progress. The disease came under control miraculously, but even after the disease seemed to be under control, the check-ups continued monthly for years as the doctor looked for signs of retrogression as a documented research case of Sister Kenny's treatment. What did I remember from all these trips to Salt Lake? How did I become permanently interested in test cases and research? I was a test case with a memory of revolving doors and spires! Somehow my life is still a melody of revolving doors and spires.
Revolving doors are those city doors that fit together in fours and swing around in a circle instead of swinging open like all the doors in my home town. Revolving doors are tricky. I had to step quickly into my space and move with the door since another door would slap me from behind if I broke the rhythm. I had to just as quickly step out on the inside of the building since a misjudgment would have put me back out on the street where I started. It was all a matter of movement and timing.
When I first started going through the revolving door, my mother stepped into the space with me, but as soon as I could walk unaided, she told me to go through alone. She cautioned me to hang onto the bar tightly and lock my arms to take the pressure off my leg to avoid a fall. I knew I must not fall inside or the revolving door would push me around and around. Mother assured me she would be close behind me. The progress of my afflicted leg seemed to key off of my stability in going through the door. I knew I must not fall inside. As my leg grew stronger, I was allowed to go around and around inside the door without stepping out. It was all a matter of rhythm. . .movement and timing.
After my visit with the doctor in Salt Lake and my trip into and out of the revolving door, I made the long trip home to Tooele--at least an hour seemed like a long trip to a now five year old. I had to focus on something as the car moved through the flat white miles exiting the Salt Lake valley, so I looked at the spires. The spires belonged to the building adjacent to my check-up center, but they were so tall I could hardly see the tops of them from my revolving door. In those days the spires belonged to the tallest building in the city, the Salt Lake Latter Day Saint Temple. The spires stood like sentinels dwarfing every other nearby edifice. I remember fixing my gaze on the spires becoming smaller and smaller as we proceeded westward. On the return trip the next week, I would stare to the east until I could spot the same spires and watch them grow bigger and bigger. Sometimes a haze would hang in the valley and dim the view from the distance, but sometimes it would be dark enough that their lights would portray them as the most beautifully enchanting thing I had ever seen. I never perceived those spires as a fairytale castle. I always knew the building was sacred, and I knew the spires were pointed toward God. The spires and God became part of me. It was a warm eager feeling.
Now, half a century later, I realize how very characteristic were the revolving doors and spires to my professional life. As a young women, my dedication was never to my own life but to my husband's. Figuratively speaking, I never felt I had two strong legs to carry me where I wanted to go or into what I wanted to do because the strong stepping out leg belonged to my husband. Since I had chosen motherhood, he was the financial support of my decision and must be allowed to pursue his choices in order to fulfill mine. I have had to step into professional opportunity throughout my life with the same attention to rhythm as I stepped through that revolving door as a child. . . with movement and timing.
I have made right choices. Never at any time has my motherhood suffered from my professionalism. Never at any time has my academic achievement suffered because I chose to stay home and nuture children. In fact, professionalism has been enhanced by the challenge of coping with additional personalities, and there have always been doors where I could step into a new challenge. There have been many revolving doors, and I have had to pay careful attention as to when I stepped into them and how long I stayed. My husband, as my mother, remained close behind me at all times in my venturing.
This way of life cannot be defined as the ordinary kind of professionalism where a decision is made about the path one wants to take, and then focuses on that path only. Nevertheless, revolving door professionalism is professionalism with the same result--knowledge and progress. Just as the spires of the Temple towered above my childhood revolving door, my belief that knowledge is eternal and of God has towered over all the times I have stepped into progress in professionalism. At present, I am looking again to step through a revolving door with judgement . . . movement and timing. This time, I am stepping through the revolving door of the marvelous information explosion. With a vision of using electrical lines in a global setting, I need to be careful to not get caught going round and round inside. I must be wise enough to step in and out with rhythm. . . movement and timing, and again, my belief that knowledge is of God gives me a warm eager feeling. My professionalism continues to be revolving doors and spires.
As a youth, I regularly rode my horse into canyons and valleys alone. Tooele, Utah was populated at the foot of a mountain range where fifteen minutes could put me into any one of three major canyons and unnumbered places to explore. It was my custom to rise about 4:30 in the morning, bridle my horse, shinny on bareback, and be in the mountains in time to see the deer come down to water in the early dawn. I enjoyed the peace in the wild. I learned the locations and condition of trails, springs, creeks, caves, bands of deer, and nesting fowl. I knew the best places to gather preserved seashells, wild water cress, and beautiful stones. "Mountain Mary," my mother used to say, "are you riding off again today? Be home by noon and call me at work, so I don't worry." I seemed to have had a built in compass, for I never remember getting lost, but I remember often seeking higher ground to orient myself. I would simply go up and look down. While in a thicket, it is impossible to get bearings, but climbing above the thicket leaves a full view of the surrounding landmarks.
Later as a teacher, I compared my experience in the mountains with a student learning a new skill. A student in the middle of information needs to push on through it and look back from a higher plateau of knowledge. Just as a hiker can be lost in a thicket, a student can be lost in information. Just as the hiker is better off pushing on through to higher ground and looking back at landforms down to re-orient, the student is better off pushing on through and looking back at the problems. Motivation is often lost when slowing down to fix the problems as they occur. The end result is that discouragement sets in when trapped in the middle and moving blindly. A hiker who climbs to higher ground to survey the entire landscape can evaluate the position of the landforms. Likewise, a student who climbs on through the information to a more comprehensive overview can focus the educational landscape. If lost in information, only the overview will help set things in place again.
Many times this "pushing-on-through" requires that the teacher give the student an unappreciated shove or an underserved "break". Jack J. Shrawder in a 1994 issue of Teaching For Success stated, "I remember at crucial times in my college education several instructors who gave me the benefit of the doubt and helped me believe that I could have a better future if I didn't give up. I had the feeling these professionals saw teaching not strictly as the imparting of knowledge, but as the development of the possibilities in each person. These dedicated instructors didn't write off anyone no matter how poorly they performed. All students in their class were treated as if they could achieve a better future--an attitude that changed my destiny. Education is the 'mining of hidden gems'."
Master teaching is, indeed, the "mining of hidden gems", and this mining dictates developing the judgement and ability to push students on through information when necessary. Thus, I have embraced a wise philosophy that many things in life, especially student growth, should be viewed down--not up.
In my early teacher training years, I thought of teachers simply as importers and exporters of knowledge. The best teacher was the best marketer of information. Importing had to have an organized way to house incoming information and exporting meant simply delivering information to the student. It was that simple. Then I had a son with a learning perception problem.
Mine was the decade of behaviorism, so words such as positive reinforcement were finding their way into my vocabulary, and my oldest son's life. Bombarded with pencils, stickers, and trinkets for his efforts to learn, what my son really learned was that he didn't have to work unless he received something for it. I began to side-step and hate labels as red flags marking what my son knew and what he didn't. I learned to despise others knowing what I knew and didn't know. What can be answered in a written test does not tell the kind of person you are; a low or high score on a test never marks what a person is or isn't. After all, motivation comes from the word motive, and a motive is a personal thing. Why should one get a prize for gaining satisfaction for a personal motive when satisfaction itself is a reward? My earlier educational philosophy began to mature. In this new light, exporting really meant connecting with the student to make the student desirous of the knowledge the teacher had to offer. The student, not the information, became the new echelon.
So how does one become "expert" in students? Pursuing this, I became an avid student of psychology--reality therapy, personality linguistics, and neurological linguistics. I studied the reading of eye movements, body language, and what makes a student receptive to new knowledge? This led me to my most prolific area of interest--the study of the brain. I am interested in how the brain records various specific information. I am interested especially in the way a thought occurs, and how to promote critical thinking. I am interested in how the language centers store language--first language and then second, phonetic transfer, and accent reduction. I am interested in Broca's Aphasia since missing syntax is a problem with which English as a Second Language students deal. I am interested in theories of learning. I want to know how to utilize this knowledge with writing. I am interested in transplants to the media cortex to cure disease, other new surgical procedures, and research studies of new discoveries in the dendrite system. I have embraced the theory of connectionism, meaning that what we want to learn needs to be connected into what we already know to keep information from being lost--unretrievable. I am interested in developing methods of using superimposed functions in my teaching. As I have became more involved with writing, I have become extremely interested in the subjects students choose for research. I enjoy knowing where the cutting edge is in various disciplines. I would like to know more about animal language, nuclear energy, body transplants, the effects of color on emotions, and of course, computer technology.
Additionally, I have always been interested in movement of the body through space: dance, gymnastics, swimming routines, missiles. I found the work of my husband in the space program a great interest. Movement fascinates me. I walked through my widest gate when taking geology classes. I soaked up learning concepts such as shift, moraines, saltation, and isostasy. As I realized the whole earth is constantly moving, even the mountains became a more intriguing place. Currently I am nurturing an interest in the theory of light and its beams: laser, infra-red, ultra-violet.
Finally, I am interested in people. I have adult children who have families whom I thoroughly enjoy from a distance, but wish they were closer geographically. I have the students I care about, a group of colleagues which inspire me in my workplace, a twenty-five year service group in the community 4-H program which ties me to youth, a local church group which form a wonderful support group for spiritual beliefs, and long time memberships in DAR and various genealogy organizations which tie me to more than my own generation. I still embrace conflicting ideas since I haven't made up my mind about everything yet, but these groups connect me to my world as I move though it. I like movement. I like the idea of connectionism.