Ever since I read Write Beside Them, I was instantly hooked by Penny Kittle's voice as an educator. Being able to meet her at Heinemann's Boothbay Literacy Retreat and hear her read aloud from her Public Teaching was a powerful experience, and it was always a special treat to read her contributions to NCTE's Voices from the Middle. I am excited to have Penny Kittle as the first guest blog post in the Celebrating Educators series on my blog. Enjoy!
I completed an elementary education degree at Oregon State University in 1983. I started teaching in southern California just two weeks after graduation because it was a year-round school. I had third graders in a portable classroom behind the school in the desert above Los Angeles, and every day I played my guitar and we made books. I had always wanted to be an elementary teacher, so I was energized by the students and the opportunity. I was also in love, though, and my future husband finished his engineering degree and took a job in Oregon that spring. I decided to move back to Oregon to teach 5th grade in a rural elementary school near the paper mill where he worked. I taught 5th and then 7th and 8th the following year, where I was assigned everything from remedial math to physical science to woodcarving to creative writing.
We bought a house in Washington state across the river from the mill, so I moved to teach at an elementary school there. I was blessed with two years with grade 4 and those were happy times. I then moved to grade 5 for a year and finished my Master's of Arts in Teaching that spring. It was a double major: Educational Leadership and British Literature. I loved every minute of my time at Lewis and Clark College and read the writing of so many people who helped me understand this complex thing called teaching. I wasn't finished with school, though, and began considering work towards a Ph.D.
Pat took a position at a paper mill near Cincinnati, Ohio, so I applied to the Ph.D program in Curriculum and Supervision at Miami University. I had two small children by then, so it was nice to stay home with our kids and go to school in the evening. Pat's work took him within a year to Michigan, so I left the program and went to work at Eastern Michigan University. For five years I supervised student teachers in districts as diverse as Detroit and Walled Lake, and also taught the methods courses for the College of Education. I learned so much because I was in classrooms from K-12 in all content areas and each school was its own community. I am forever grateful for those years observing dozens of enthusiastic new teachers.
We moved one last time for Pat's work in 1997. We had family on both coasts, so living in the middle of the country meant for a lot of traveling. Pat was offered a job managing a paper mill in New Hampshire. I was thrilled to interview with Jane Hansen at the University of New Hampshire as I considered entering their Ph.D program, walking the halls where many of my heroes had taught and written. We decided that it was just too far with our kids so young, though, so I applied to teach 8th grade in town and spent the next three years experimenting again with reading and writing workshop.
Eleven years ago now I was offered a job mentoring new teachers for our school district. It meant leaving full-time teaching, but I was excited to combine what I had learned at Eastern to our teacher turnover problem in the school district. I have since spent 1/3 of my day teaching high school, 1/3 mentoring new teachers K-12, and 1/3 as a K-12 literacy coach. It is all demanding, inspiring work. I am grateful.
I teach for the University of New Hampshire in the summer literacy institutes and work as a consultant in the Learning Through Teaching program during the school year, offering graduate courses for teachers in my school district each semester.
I have also been writing. Since 2003 I've published four books and have a fifth due this fall. Don Graves and Don Murray were my mentors in moving from ideas to text, and they helped me believe that my voice mattered. Each time I wrote I learned something I could take into my classroom and it has enriched my work in more ways than I can tell you. The year Don Graves and I spent videotaping elementary classrooms and talking about what we saw was a year I continue to learn from. I also wrote a column for Voices from the Middle for six years, and that quarterly deadline kept me writing even when I didn't think I had anything to say.
Today I keep a notebook and write in it most days, I read like a wolf eats, as Gary Paulson says, and I still love teaching. I've spent the last few years focused on what I'm learning about teaching reading and look forward to putting all that thinking together in my next book. I still get the most energy from writing stories of my students.
For me, this career has been about risk taking and reflection. I have been given opportunities and I often didn't think I knew enough to take them, but I did. I learned along the way, challenging myself to read and think about this work in complex ways and never settle for less than reaching every student. Teachers are powerful. I work every day to use that power well.
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