Favorite #132: Early Childhood Educators

A night of sharing books and fun at Mitchell Community College/Mooresville Campus.

Language and Literacy

Donna Hogue is an Early Childhood instructor at Mitchell Community College in Statesville, NC. Recently, I and another children’s author, Lydia Steele Richmond, had the opportunity to visit and share our books in Donna’s EDU 280 Language and Literacy Experiences class at Mitchell’s Mooresville campus.

Donna explained since her students had just completed a chapter about reading and storytelling, she thought asking us to read would be a great opportunity for them to observe firsthand some of the elements in reading to children. These include how to gain and keep attention, hand gestures and voice inflection.

Lydia shared first, explaining how she liked to incorporate real-life situations in her book and stories. Living in Germany as a child, Lydia said she had great memories of childhood play and friendships. Pulling from those memories in developing the characters and relationships in her book, A Day to Remember, she even used names of real friends for the characters in her story.

After gaining everyone’s attention by explaining the backstory first, Lydia then began to read, slowing down and using emphasis at important points in the story. While the death of a loved one may be hard for a child to understand, Lydia’s book deals with that kind of loss in a way children can understand and accept. In this story, the loved one who passed was an elderly neighbor lady. After much discussion by the BFF’s, it was decided the best way to honor the neighbor’s memory was to care for her beloved grapevine. Although the friend was gone, her memory would live on through actions of love and caring.

Donna’s students loved the story, asking questions not only about plot and character development, but also about the writing process. Lydia shared she’s thinking of writing a second book, using the friendships developed in A Day to Remember as the catalyst. She said the theme for the next book will probably be the hot topic of bullying.

After Lydia’s presentation, it was my turn to share. While Lydia’s book is in narrative form, my books are written in rhythm and rhyme. Deciding to read my first book, Tired of My Bath, with that story having funny twists, I couldn’t wait to watch the faces and hear the laughter in all the right places. Each of my five books have a moral lesson and in Tired of My Bath, the lesson is listen to your mom.

The hour-and-a-half class passed quickly, with the night ending with questions, a few photos and some students even purchasing books. It was obvious by comments during and after class that the students were passionate about their chosen field, eager to learn and be the best they could be. Donna said early childhood educators are always passionate about their chosen field. I totally agree. There’s just something special about people who work with young children. God bless everyone of them.

Next week I plan to share a letter from one of the students in the EDU class who sent me an email about an experience she had later that night after hearing, Tired of My Bath. Be sure to check out next week’s blog. Thanks Donna for the invitation to read to your class. I can’t wait until next time.

Do you know someone who is an Early Childhood Educator? Have you volunteered in their classroom, or helped their program in someway? What was that experience like? Leave a comment below, message on Facebook or email dicysm@yahoo.com

Thanks,

Dicy

www.dicymcculloughbooks.com

www.dicymcculloughbooks.com/blog