Why We Teach

July 22, 2012

Dear Miss Kakugawa,

It has been 46 years since I was your student in the first grade at Waiakea Elementary School.   I was 6 then and I am 52 now.  Before the half-century mark comes to pass,  I think it is time that I said hello and thanked you for teaching me to read and inspiring in me a love of words.

I have thought of you so many times in my life but perhaps at no time more powerfully than when I heard the Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 2010 of novelist Mario Vargas Llosa.  It began, “I learned to read at the age of five…. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me.”  (Here’s a link to his very moving and beautiful speech:  http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2010/vargas_llosa-lecture_en.html)

While I obviously cannot claim to have reached the heights of Mario Vargas Llosa (!!), I can say that being an avid reader has enhanced my life in so many important ways, from launching me into an academic career to giving me refuge from the mundane and hectic features of everyday life.

I have such clear memories of you as my teacher in the first grade.   I remember learning to read and how exhilarating I found it!   I recall also when one of your poetry books came out a few years later.  I think it may have been your first.  My father and I went to a book signing you did at a small shop in downtown Hilo.  It made quite an impression on me!   I still have that book, as well as another one of yours, in my parents’ home in New York.  I have gone back to the poems they contain from time to time.  Doing so transports me back to a past that I have such fond memories of.    Yet it is also a past full of people with whom I have long fallen out of touch, somewhat regrettably.   I have been back to Hilo only once since we left in 1972.   My parents have never returned.

Ann Kakugawa has given me an important emotional bridge back to the Hawaii days.  After a three-decade lapse in communication, I am in contact with her again.  Although I have yet to see her in person, it almost feels like we never lost touch.  I will probably go to Alaska next summer and am so looking forward to seeing her in person. In addition to providing me with your e-mail address, Ann has brought me up to date on your writings.  I can’t wait to read Kapoho.   My family, along with the Kakugawa clan (your brother, Ann, Jill, and Lynn), went out to visit you and your mother there once.   I have the clearest memory of that day.  It was the first of several times that I was around your mother, who had such a nice way about her: calm, gentle, and very Japanese.

Hawaii holds a very special place in my heart.   Its emotional meaning is no doubt heightened by the fact that it was the last place where we lived as a whole family.   As you probably know, soon after my family moved to New York (in 1972) my brother Danny died.   My parents and I have grieved his loss and cherished his memory ever since.   Despite the enormous hole his death left, we have led good lives.

I went off to Cornell University as an undergraduate (I started in 1978), then onto Berkeley for a Ph.D. in political science.   I am now a professor at the University of Texas, and my area is Latin American politics.   My country specialty is Brazil.  Here’s my professional link:  http://www.utexas.edu/cola/insts/llilas/faculty/hunterw1

I love my work – both the teaching and the research/writing aspects — and I feel enormously privileged to hold a tenured position in a university that supports my aspirations and interests in both spheres.
I am married to Kurt Weyland, who is also in my department.   I met him in Brazil, but he is a German national (who went to Stanford while I was at Berkeley).  We have two wonderful sons, Nikolas and Andreas.   Niko is now 14.   He is the one posing in front of a store called Niko in Berlin!  Niko “has the magic” when it comes to language and literature.   My other guy is Andi (12) and he is in the photo with my parents.   He is very straightforward, funny and lively.  As you might discern, Niko got a big dose of the Japanese genes and Andi is more European.  Kurt, myself, and my parents (both still alive) are insanely in love with them.

Just writing you brings back so many wonderful memories!   It feels good to finally express my gratitude – however overdue — for the lessons you taught me long ago and for the example you provided of being a writer.
Warmest regards,
Wendy Hunter

(printed with permission from Wendy.)

Read Full Post »

Learning to Read by Charles’ Pellegrino’s son

I CAN READ!!!

A reader commented on my Technical Math for Dummies blog that “online tutors are best persons to guide students doing their studies” and I responded:

I’m still stuck in the dinosaur age and after 25 years in the classroom, I choose to be there because I believe the best of tutors is a human one. When students come to need tutoring, it often implies there is a need for additional help. In my experience, I discovered that often, the source of reading or math or any other subject matter problems may not necessarily reside in that particular area of study. And if does, it takes more than textbook guides to get to the core of reading which is magical, enjoyable and meaningful.

I once diagnosed a student’s reading problem being outside of reading. It took a lot of probing and talking story with Spence to get to his source of disliking books. Another student Joey, who was retained in first grade because he couldn’t read and write, had already learned to do both in the parking lot.

In September, on the first day of school,  Destiny brought her 3^rd grade brother to me and said, “He still can’t read and write. You’re the only one who can help him.” And I did.

You can meet these students in my book, “Teacher, You Look Like a Horse.”

Today, I want to introduce you to someone very special, someone who supports my views on having real people as your teachers. Do you think his dad could have been replaced by an on-line tutor with the same kind of result?

A few posts back, I introduced you to one of the daughters of Charles Pellegrino of “Last Train from Hiroshima” through her thought-provoking essay, “Truth Matters.” Today, I bring you his son Kyle – who had to climb over a reading problem, as did many of Pellegrino’s family members. Their stories of triumph need to be shared so I proudly bring you Kyle’s Impressions.

Impressions

by Kyle Pellegrino

written at age 13

As a young boy, I always had trouble reading. I could never put words together; I could never make out sentences. I even had trouble writing. In preschool, my twin sister, Kelly, could write my name before I could. Other children held the impression that I was stupid. I did everything I could to try and catch up to Kelly. Everyone moved so fast, but I was left behind.

My dad went through very much the same thing when he was a boy. He had a severe case of dyslexia and probably had it worse than I. He told me one day as I was struggling to read comics, “It was hard for me too but somehow having to climb that extra hill gave me more of a love for words than I’d ever have had otherwise.” My dad not only grew up to read books, but to write them as well.

Dad told me that comic books had helped him to catch up, so he tried the same thing with me. The pictures helped to explain the words — which removed some of the stress. The sentences were broken up into shorter lines so it seemed that I was making faster progress. My dad would read one line to me, and I would read the next to him. As I gradually progressed, I read more and more of the dialogue and he read less and less. Months passed, and I graduated to more complex graphic novels. By the time I was in second grade I was reading, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, now ahead of my class.

Surprisingly, reading had become fun; I then started to work on my writing. I worked very hard to sharpen my writing skills and still do so. I try to write often and improve my vocabulary, grammar, and spelling. In school, when commenting on my assignments, my teachers like my style but they note that grammar is something I need to work on. I learn from this criticism and change my writing accordingly.

My dad is a person who cares only for the well being of his children; he helped me through my hardest hurdle in life and helps me with the little problems. I remember crying when I couldn’t read anything. I kept telling myself I was stupid as I stared blankly at the page. Since my dad went through the same thing, he told me “I can see and feel it through your eyes.” Now I love reading and I love writing. In addition to learning how to read and write, a greater lesson has come out of this. I can learn and feel what other people are going through. I don’t just take a first impression and judge the person on that. I give them time and try to see what’s going on in their lives. People say first impressions stick with you forever, I beg to differ.

Kyle’s dad Charles Pellegrino’s response:

I knew he’d do all right. Back when he was seven, when I was working on a tomb project so secret that James Cameron had us working simultaneously in Greece and Egypt just to divert attention from the fact that we were really working in Israel, everything on the sample boxes was written in a code of our own creation.

Kyle was looking at the symbols on the boxes one morning and broke the codes – figuring out exactly where I was working and what I must be working on. After that, I built him a genuine mechanical cryptex with clues hidden all over my office. All three kids were racing so hard to break the codes that when they got to the secret hidden inside (and forcing the cryptex rather than entering the three key words really would have released ink-dissolving glycerine from a vial), it was such anti-climax compared to breaking the codes that they lost interest in the real secret, hidden inside. It turns out that about 25% of the specialized HS exam involved code-breaking.

When I read the end of this “Impressions” essay, and what he learned most from his experience – more important than learning to read – wow. All three of them are learning that Omoiyari is not just a word, but a way of life.

Charles Pellegrino

Read Full Post »