Monthly Archives: November 2018

Family History

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I don’t often talk about genealogy here, but that will soon change.  I am fascinated by family history.  My love of genealogy is intertwined with my love of reading, writing, history, and of course, my love of family.  For me, genealogy brings it all together.  Below is one of my favorite articles published in our Huron Shores Genealogical Society Genogram, December 2016.  You can find the entire issue here.

Great

My great-grandmother, Leona Clara Forward Buttrick.

Revealing the Truth

Great’s Story

Whether we recognize it or not, we all have blind spots when it comes to our family history.  As genealogists, it is sometimes easy to overlook the obvious.  I experienced such an issue not long ago.  The resolution will stay with me for some time.  I thought I knew more about my great-grandmother, Leona Clara Forward Buttrick (my mother’s paternal grandmother), than I actually did.

Growing up just outside of my mother’s hometown of Standish, MI, my mother made sure that she took my sister and I to visit her grandmother, whom we nicknamed Great, weekly.  We would often visit after school as she lived only a few blocks from Standish Elementary.  Those visits stay with me.  They inspired my interests in genealogy and history.  Over time, Great told me stories of teaching in a one-room schoolhouse and how she met my great-grandfather, Hatley Buttrick.  I also learned that her memories of growing up in Standish were not happy ones due to the loss of her mother in 1917.

For whatever reason, I assumed that Leona received training as a teacher in western Michigan where she was originally from and later settled.  Her teaching stories involved a one-room schoolhouse in western Michigan.  She later married my great-grandfather Hatley and lived in Marshall, MI for most of her adult life, only returning to Standish in 1980 to be closer to her children and grandchildren.  I could not have been more wrong. I did not consider that may have continued her education in Standish after graduating from Standish High School in 1921.

When I first voiced my interest in researching my great-grandmother’s education, fellow HSGS member Lugene Suszko Daniels suggested I look in the then newly printed book Arenac County Normal, 1904-1957, written and compiled by the Arenac County Historical Society (2013).  At first I doubted I would find anything.  While I knew that Normal Schools provided teacher education in the earlier part of the 20th century, I largely associated the Arenac County Normal School with the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, not the early 1920s.

Not only did I find information on Leona Forward’s further education at the county normal school, I also found information on her senior year of high school.  I also rediscovered a piece of family history I had forgotten.  It turns out that she attended school, including county normal, with her step-sister Barbara Wilson.  Ultimately, I purchased my own copy of the book.  Not only does it contain pertinent family history, it also contains a treasure trove of local information, including ties to several people I know.  Coincidentally, I came across this information as I decided to go back to school to earn my teaching certificate.  I am proud to continue to teaching tradition in my family, and I am glad that I was able to fill in the details of my great-grandmother’s educational history.  Never pass up the opportunity to search all local resources, even if you think that they may not apply.  You never know what you may find.

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Leona on the 1919 Standish High School girls’ basketball team.

Underground Readers

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In Donalynn Miller’s The Book Whisperer, she describes various types of readers in her own terms.  Instead of struggling or reluctant readers, she uses the terms “developing readers” and “dormant readers.”  She also describes a third type of reader:  the “underground reader.”  While I still plan to dissect The Book Whisperer here, that is not what I am doing today.  No:  I want to talk about my experience growing up as an “underground” reader.

As defined in The Book Whisperer, “underground” readers are students who love to read, but due to circumstances beyond their control, they keep their reading lives separate from school.  They may love to read, but they usually do not have the time or opportunity to read what they would like in school.  Underground readers may even go out of their way to get in as much free reading time as possible during school.  They are the students who do not want free reading time during class to end.

While I do remember having some free time read all throughout my k-12 years, it would have never been enough.  As a child, I remember sneaking time to read and hurried through my work to have more free reading time.  I even remember taking a book out to recess once or twice.  I loved to read as a child.  I still love to read.

Unfortunately, my love of reading didn’t have all that much to do with school.  To be fair, there were times when my reading life was influenced by school.  For example, some of my favorite elementary school and childhood memories involve a teacher or librarian reading to my class.  For this reason, I included Roald Dahl and Laura Ingalls Wilder on a list of childhood favorites.  You can read the original list and explanation here.  I probably would have read Laura Ingalls Wilder on my own as a child – eventually – but nothing compared to Mrs. Butz reading Little House in the Big Woods to my second grade class.  As for Roald Dahl, he happened to be a favorite of several of my teachers, and I can’t imagine elementary school without his books.

As influential as those authors were to my early reading life, I read so much more on my own.  I had the freedom to read widely.  I took full advantage of having a mother and an aunt who were elementary school teachers – and a grandmother who also loved to read and discuss books.  I recognize that I am in the minority, and I probably would have developed a love for reading no matter what.

That just isn’t good enough.  I have to agree with Donalynn Miller.  The conventional way reading is taught today underserves “underground” readers.  Teachers don’t let them explore their love of reading and give them the skills and permission they need to make their own reading choices.  This was true twenty to thirty years ago during my childhood, but it is even more true today.  For example, I can’t imagine being told by a teacher or librarian that I couldn’t check out or read a book because it wasn’t at my “level.”  I also can’t imagine taking AR after AR test just to fulfill a silly requirement – and NOT because I truly wanted to read the book.  Instead, Donalynn Miller provides a great format for serving ALL readers, including those who already love to read.

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