Sometimes personal childhood experiences yield useful metaphors to reflect on our professional adult experiences. Such is the case of a short piece I wrote during the Asilomar Conference held last year. I wrote, “When I was four, Elgie and Grace Bright absorbed my siblings and me into their family. Sometimes, memories of loneliness and love surface in a swirl of rainbow colors like oil atop an asphalt highway after a light summer rain. How strange to leave my home in my compact neighborhood of Detroit to live on the expanse of their family farm in Memphis, Michigan. How odd to wander among the acrid chicken coops, odiferous pig sties, aromatic strawberry patches, and to sit under the exotic quince trees growing along side the roiling waters of the Belle River.

One particularly vivid memory slips into my mind when I pack picnic lunches for my family. I recall lying in wait, lurking at the edge of the gravel driveway, ready to pounce on Granddaddy Bright as soon as he got home from work! Granddaddy worked on a construction crew and smelled like it, but I didn’t mind his musky body odor. I’d greet him with a full body hug, crunching the dried mud on his overalls, sometimes smearing it with my sweaty cheek when I reached around his waist to grab the lunch box he hid behind his back. I’d feel the rumble of his rich baritone voice calling over my head, “Hello, Gracie. How was your day?” I was an adult when someone told me that Grandma Bright always packed extra – more than he could eat – just so there’d be leftovers for me.

Then, as a child, I’d take the lunchbox, run back up the driveway, and sit by myself on the porch. With the black hump topped lunch box perched on my knees, I’d flip up the metal latches and thrust back the top, rattling the thermos bottle clamped inside the lid. Ahhh…the welcome aroma of a leftover bologna sandwich, the faint whiff of peanut butter cookies, and perhaps a limp sliver of carrot. I loved it that Granddaddy saved a portion of his lunch for me – he’d been thinking about me even when he was at work.

It was not until I became a lunch-packing parent myself and learned about salmonella poisoning that I realized that I could have died of love.”

Rereading this narrative now makes me think of our lives as teachers and I muse. While Grandma and Granddaddy’s acts of love could have been disastrous, they weren’t. I survived and am here to tell the story! In much the same way, some of our professional acts of love may be perceived as disastrous by uninformed critics of schools, but are not. When viewed from the “only-teach-to-the-State-test” perspective, one would think student tailored teaching that allows students to choose their own writing topics, to choose their own outside reading books, to choose the genre they’d like to show their understanding of a topic or issue would be an irresponsible way to teach. But time after time, when we study the practice of our nation’s most successful teachers, we find that student choice, within teacher control, yields outstanding results. Tom Fox, in his address to the California Writing Project’s Fall Conference, made this point patently clear as he discussed “exigency” as a motivator for passionate writing. When students believe they have a personal reason for reading or writing, they do so with enthusiasm, willing to learn the skills to do each well. Ask the veteran teachers at your school site. At CATE 2004, listen to the commendations written about teachers receiving the CATE Classroom Excellence Awards. Read Nancy Atwell and Linda Reif. Recall the work of Louise Rosenblatt and Donald Graves. These educators and most of the articles in our professional journals reiterate the importance of teachers stepping out on the limb, taking into consideration the students within our classroom at the present time and letting these young people have a greater say in what they read and write.

Of course, this does not mean we can neglect our responsibility as the professionals who know the course content materials and the local, state, and national standards to which our students and we will be held accountable. Just as Grandma Bright packed a little something extra in Granddaddy’s lunch each day, so there would be something special for me, I urge each of you to pack a little something extra in your lessons. Attend your local council events and, February 6-8, CATE 2004 in San Diego where you can learn about the essentials and the extras. You’ll be inspired to tailor your standards-based lessons to meet the individual needs and to fit the particular personalities of the students you have this year. You’ll find your students will respond as I did, lurking in the classrooms, waiting for you to arrive with the special treats of the day, embracing the assignments, even though they may be tough at first, not minding that they, the students, may have to sweat it out to achieve the goals you’ve set together. You’ll find the students grabbing that assignment, hoarding that book, eager to explore what’s in it for them. They may decide to write a simple, old-fashioned letter to the editor or devour one of the classics that you’ve dog-eared from much reading. They may publish an original poem online or inhale the latest young adult novel you just purchased but haven’t had time to read.

At the end of the year, or maybe not until they have children of their own, these young men and women will look back and say, in the hyperbolic language they sometimes use, that the challenges you set before them could have killed them. But they didn’t. Like I, decades later, recalling the incident of the love-packed lunches, the students later may realize that your love for teaching them as individuals – your providing “extras”, your insisting on their making decisions and thinking for themselves, your requiring them do the difficult things - could have done them in, but it didn’t! But, even if you never hear from your students, know that student-tailored teaching is a right and good way to teach, so do it anyway. It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing.