Education

"¢ According to Susam Edwards' biography, "œErma Bombeck: A Life in Humor," Ms. Bombeck enrolled at Ohio University in 1945 "“ an event that turned out to be disastrous for her. She received C's and lower in her freshman writing course, and the student newspaper would not let her write for it "“ even though Ms. Bombeck had worked professionally as a reporter. After the semester was over (OU was on the semester system back then), Ms. Bombeck went to see a counselor, whom she told that she wanted to be a professional writer. The counselor looked at her grades, then told her not even to think about it.

Fortunately, Ms. Bombeck withdrew from OU and instead attended the University of Dayton, where she was encouraged to write and from which she graduated. Before she died in 1996, she wrote several best-selling books and her humorous column was syndicated, appearing at one point in 900 newspapers three days a week. Because an instructor at UD had encouraged her by writing the note "You can write" on one of her papers, when she died she not only left UD all of her papers, but she also left it a lot of money so it could hold a writers' conference annually. What is the name of the conference? It is called, "You can write."

"¢ Larry Romanoff worked as an academic counselor for Ohio State University football coach Woody Hayes, who "fired" (and quickly rehired) him several times. One day, Larry was very happy because he was academic counselor to the football players and he had some really good news for Woody "“ every football player except one had gotten above a 2.0 GPA that grading period. He expected Woody to be really happy, but instead Woody looked over the grade report, saw that one player had not gotten above a 2.0 GPA, threw the grade report on the floor and stomped on it, then kicked in the side of a file cabinet. Finally, he fired Larry. Later that day, Woody held a meeting and told his assistant coaches, "We had a real good quarter, but don't tell Larry about it, because he'll get a fat head." (Of course, Larry wasn't really fired. He kept on working for Woody.)

"¢ Laura Numeroff got her start writing and illustrating children's books when she took a course called, of course, Writing and Illustrating Children's Books. The course was taught at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, by children's book writer and illustrator Barbara Bottner, who praised Laura's first effort at writing and illustrating a children's book. Laura was so excited by the praise that she tried to get the book, "Amy for Short," published. She says, "After four rejections, a big publisher bought my homework." Her most famous book is probably "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," and she thought up the idea for the book on a long and boring car trip. She told her companion, "What if you gave a mouse a cookie?" She then added, "He'd probably want some milk to go with it." She says, "I ended up telling the entire story from beginning to end. It's the first time that ever happened, and it hasn't happened since."

"¢ When J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, was 9 years old, she moved to a new home and started attending a new school. Her new teacher gave her a math test to see what she knew; unfortunately, young J.K. had not yet studied fractions, and the test included fractions. Her new teacher seated students according to how smart she thought they were; the students she thought were smart sat on her left, and the students she thought were dumb sat on her right. Since J.K. had not done well on the math test, her new teacher thought she was dumb and seated her accordingly. J.K. says, "I was as far right as you could get without sitting in the playground." However. J.K. studied and soon she moved to a seat on the teacher's left.

"¢ As you would expect, teachers are good thinkers. A visitor whom a teacher wanted to impress visited her class, and the teacher succeeded in impressing the visitor, since whenever she asked a question, all of the students in her class raised their hands and whomever the teacher called on to answer the question knew the correct answer. However, the teacher did employ a trick. All of the students had received instructions before the visitor arrived: If they knew the answer, they were to raise their right hand, and if they did not know the answer, they were to raise their left hand.

"¢ Comedian Lewis Black's mother was a substitute teacher in city classrooms, some of them very tough. Usually, a substitute teacher would have a rough time of it, but not Mrs. Black because she had a very sharp tongue and a mastery of sarcasm. One tough kid asked her why he had to learn the subject she was teaching, and she replied, "Because when you are pumping my gas at the Sears Station, where you have been for 10 years because you didn't get your diploma, I don't want to waste any breath saying 'I told you so.'"

"¢ The education of an artist can begin very early. Children's book illustrator and author Ruth Heller uses an artistic technique in her professional work that she learned in elementary school. She begins the creation of an illustration by drawing on tracing paper, and then turns the tracing paper over and transfers the drawing to watercolor paper by using a butter knife or a Popsicle stick to rub the lines. Ms. Heller says, "I learned to do that in the second grade, and it still works for me."

"¢ During World War II, despite rules against education, Jews still opened and ran schools in the ghettos. Some schools were disguised as workshops or soup kitchens, and some teachers taught a few students at home. Whenever the Nazis came around a teacher's home, the teacher would pretend to be teaching students such things as how to make military uniforms and shoes for the Nazis instead of what they were really teaching: Hebrew, literature, mathematics, etc.