If you have no idea what I'm talking about, check out this Tuesday Teatime: Ten Books.
I don't actually have that much to say about The Secret Garden because it was circumstance rather than the story that really made it a memorable book for me.
When I was five, I started playing 'school' outside, using a tree as a 'chalkboard' and a little twig as a pointer. My parents saw how much I loved it, so by the time I was seven, they had helped me set up a little school room in the house, complete with a chalkboard and easel, a globe, a little yellow student's desk that I used as a teacher's desk, and a plethora of accessories like chalk, a clipboard, and fake passes to the bathroom and the nurse. I would set up my dolls, or when I was luckier my sister and neighbors, and begin teaching whatever I had learned in school that day.
For whatever reason, The Secret Garden somehow ended up in this school room. Most of the rest of our books were kept in bookshelves in our bedrooms, and while I very easily could have gone and grabbed one, I opted for the path of least resistance and used the book that had somehow ended up in the room with me. So the children's abridged and illustrated version of The Secret Garden was the first book I ever 'taught.' I read it aloud to my 'class' and asked them questions about it; I dreamt up projects that they could do on the characters and plot; I made up spelling and vocabulary lists from it. And now, almost seventeen years later, I am a real English teacher. I'm not teaching The Secret Garden this year, but I know I'll get just as much joy from teaching this year's books as I did seventeen long years ago teaching The Secret Garden to my dolls.
I've come a long way from that little makeshift school room. Finally out in Wisconsin about to embark on my first real teaching job (no longer a student teacher or assistant teacher as I have been the past two years,) I had the true joy of seeing my classroom for the first time the other day. There's no little yellow teacher's desk, but I think I'll make do ;)
I love how you taught The Secret Garden to your "class", Libby! I haven't heard of the idea of making spelling and vocabulary lists from a book the students are studying. I like that! Out of curiosity, have you worked with whiteboards in addition to chalkboards? If so, which do you like better as a teacher?
ReplyDeleteLove this book! And although it's written for children, the are some pretty grown up lessons to gain from it. I have read and reread this book many a time, and still find it "new" and very enjoyable. I would recommend it to any and all.
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