When I was in Europe, so many things were happening so fast that I couldn’t write them down fast enough. Now that I’m back home, there are no publishers, basketball stars, road trips, airports etc. Now I have to think of what to write about. Life with Heavenletters is beautiful, but there isn’t a whole lot to say that you don’t already know.

When I was teaching school, there was always a story to tell, so I think I will tell you about one now.

Back then and maybe now, too, there was a separate reading department, and the emphasis was on reading skills – speed and comprehension. Not that those are ignoble goals. It’s just not how I saw it. In the reading department classes, what was given to the children to read was calibrated at grade levels. Sixth grade level readers were given reading materials that had been abridged and adapted to the sixth grade level. More advanced vocabulary was out.

My subject was English, creative writing, and literature. The priority in reading, as I saw it, is what the children are reading. I thought what they are reading had to be worth reading for itself. I believed that it was a plus to read words that you didn’t already know.

I always loved to read, but I never read to improve my comprehension or speed, and I doubt that that would have excited me. My idea of reading was and is to have the book you’re reading so exciting and valuable that you forget you’re reading!

I also shunned Warriner’s Grammar, the most left-brained grammar book I ever saw. Were you subjected to Warriner’s Grammar?

Fortunately, I was able to choose The Roberts English Series, A Linguistics Program. The text book included the History of Language and the study of etymologies. There was also great literature as well, none of it abridged, including Greek and Norse Mythology and Bible Stories. And poetry written for adults by Shakespeare, A.E. Housman, Thomas Hardy and T.S. Eliot. Yes, all these were in a 7th grade textbook.

I must tell you that all classes were grouped homogenously. That meant that classes were rated high or low and various levels in between. The fact is all children are bright - when they are interested in something. Just not all children are academic. The class I’m going to tell you about was considered to be in the slow range, but that wasn’t true at all.

It was the general practice in my classes that I introduced what we would be reading. I would give the kids some things to look for and I would do anything I could think of to get them to want to read it. Often I would read some of it out loud. But then we’d read silently, and then the children would read aloud. And by and large everyone liked to read out loud.

You may remember The Labors of Hercules. The gods punished this strong man of Greek mythology by giving him twelve impossible tasks to perform. The first was to slay a famous lion that no weapon could wound. The following eleven tasks were each even more impossible, yet Hercules did perform each task successfully and in amazing ways.

Here are some of the names contained in the short history of Hercules’ labors:

Nemea, Mycenae, Eurystheus, Iolaus, Cerynitia, Mount Erymanthus, Augean, Stymphalus, Ceuta, Mycenae, Cerberus.

I told the class how to pronounce these names as best as I knew. I also told them that when they are reading out loud and come to a difficult name — to say it as if they really do know how to say it.

One boy said, “But isn’t that bluffing?”

I said, “That’s exactly what it is.”

So the children read The Labors of Hercules out loud. And they read smoothly and magnificently.

One day the school principal, Mr. Spring, came in to observe. Principals always come in unannounced. It so happens that the children were reading aloud when Mr. Spring came in, and they were pronouncing Eurystheus and Cerynitia like pros.

Mr. Spring was mightily impressed. He was so impressed he wanted the Head of Reading in the Springfield Schools to come in and observe.

I kept saying that this was not the first time the class had read this story out loud. Mr. Spring said that didn’t matter. He had never seen anything like this before.

The Head of Reading in the Springfield Schools did come in to observe and was not particularly impressed or impressed at all.

But the kids were. They were impressed they were being noticed and very proud of themselves. I think, by their very confidence, that their reading skills must have jumped three levels higher!

What do you think?