Working in schools influenced my writing and the subjects I chose to write about. I also loved celebrating and inspiring the students who would rather sit in the library and write poems-like Etheridge Knight inspired me. I especially loved interacting with the kids, inspiring their reading lives, and keeping up with what was popular, timely, and relevant in children’s literature. What did you love the most about being a teaching librarian? And, for the last 30 years, I have served students in the city of Memphis. So, with the encouragement of my parents, I went back to school to earn my library science degree to become a librarian.Īfter library school, I worked at a public library, and my dad suggested that I return to school to get my teaching degree-he and my mother were educators-because I wasn’t earning what I would as a public school teacher. When I received my undergraduate degree in English, I learned quickly that writing wasn’t going to pay the bills. But once I got to college, it was time to think about making a living. Learning that writing could be a career for me carried me through elementary school, junior high, and high school. It wasn’t until that moment with a real live writer/poet in front of me, who told me that I could be a poet, too, that I thought to myself, “I’m going to be a writer.” He read poems and talked about poetry, writing, and books. Then, when I was in the sixth grade, a poet by the name of Etheridge Knight, who was a student of the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, came to my school, Snowden Elementary School, in Memphis. As a kid, starting in the third grade, I was always writing stories and poetry. Which came first: writing or becoming a teaching librarian?
0 kommentar(er)
