Teacher Highlight - Mrs. Slimp

“William Tell's Son”

Did you flinch as you watched 

Your father string his massive bow,

Fit arrow to string,

And draw back the taut line

To its furthest point?

The apple rests precariously

On your brown head,

But you must not move a muscle

In your neck to gain relief.

Your only tasks--

To wait, 

To watch,

To make yourself as small as you can

So that the apple might appear the larger target.

What prayer can you compose

In the space the arrow travels?

Only the father feels the cramp of muscles

That have endured such terrible, steady stillness.

Why I Teach English

I was raised in a time when television was limited to three channels and in a home surrounded by books, so reading became the primary form of entertainment in my childhood, and I suppose it developed into a habit. One of my earliest memories involves sitting on my grandparents' sofa--where their television received only two channels if the wind happened to be blowing in the right direction from Abilene--and thumbing through a set of picture books on World War 2. Discovering photographs of concentration camps (with their exotic names of Dachau and Birkenau and Treblinka) transported me to rather deep waters for a six year old, and, although I wouldn't have phrased my thoughts in those days in terms of man's inhumanity to man, I knew that books were somehow going to be a key to helping me encounter a world larger and far more complicated than that ranch in west Texas.
So I began reading for information about the wider world. I began reading to discover other lands and peoples. I began reading for companionship, to discover that I wasn't the only person in the world to have ever felt a particular way. I began reading to understand my own predicament. And I've continued to read as a part of my search for the Word behind all the words.
I majored in English because I'm hopeless at math and science and there was an entire body of knowledge that encompassed my interests in history, philosophy, theology, and psychology. I began teaching because I am too undisciplined to sit still in a room and think and write about stories and poems, but I'm not too undisciplined to share my love of these works with others.