Middle Level Luncheon-Gary Paulsen
Middle Level Luncheon with Gary Paulsen
While I did not take notes about this session specifically, Gary Paulsen’s two main points were one, we need to be attuned to the fact that some of our students are slipping through the cracks. For some of them, all they need is that little bit of encouragement from a teacher. It came from a librarian for him. She gave him a library card, something of his own, with his name on it, and she gave him a book. He said it took him six weeks to get through the first book because he was a struggling reader. It took him a month to make it through the second book, three weeks for the third, two for the fourth, and eventually he was reading 2-3 books per week. We hold mighty power in the lives our students and sometimes we need to remember that the smallest thing might do it for them.
And two, that there is no right way to do it. He came to writing in a round-about way. We need to remember that not all of our students are going to respond in the ways that we want them to, and that’s OK. They don’t have to necessarily come to things in our way, our time.
As an aside, he told hilarious stories. Stories about his dog sled days, stories about his first writing job, stories about trapping. And he told us that during the research for a biography of Sally Hemmings, he discovered that Thomas Jefferson was a pedophile. He liked them young…9, 10, 11 young. He, of course, owned slaves and was, by all accounts, fairly brutal to them. Open the door too slowly, get beaten. There was a mini-rant there about how we revere Thomas Jefferson, but if he were alive today, we’d put him in a ditch and shoot him. (I tried to find substantiating information with relevance to Paulsen's claims, but did not find anything...the following links are what I could find)
- Decweb: Jefferson's Dirt
- Was it Beneath the Personal Dignity of Thomas Jefferson to Consort with Black Slaves?-there are links on this pages to other sites with information regarding the relationship between Jefferson and Hemmings
- Thomas Jefferson and Slaves-Teaching an American Paradox
- The Hidden Side of Monticello- A Chicago Tribune article to read you have to register
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Last Updated April 11, 2011
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