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Laurie teaches high school English and holds a Master's Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Her short story, “The Valedictorian,” was published in Farrago literary magazine in 2004. Currently, she is working on her first full-length novel, which she plans to complete by September of 2009.
In addition to her academic career, Laurie and her husband Jerry are part-time missionaries sharing God's love with the poor and disadvantaged. This past March she spent a week in Haiti working in Haitian schools and sharing the gospel through village ministry. In the future Laurie hopes to go into the mission field full-time and support her family's ministry with her writing.
Laurie resides with her husband and two children in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
"Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord." -- Romans 12:11
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Writing… writing is how I know myself; it is how I realize ideas and vent frustrations. Why do I write? It is a constituent part of who I am. As hours pass, I sit content and inspired as my hand journeys across the page. Mostly fiction. Essays when I must. Poetry not so often anymore. As a child I wrote book reports and research papers for pleasure. I admit, compared to the average kid, I was a strange child. While my friends played Spud or watched MTV, I filled my mind with details about insects, unicorns in preparation to create my world. In high school I wrote during class, after school, weekends spent with my head wrapped in words. Page after page, a Niagara Falls of short stories and poetry. My teachers didn’t always appreciate this aspect of my passion (especially when I wrote rather than listen while they lectured and gave out assignments). Because of my love for the written word and my desire to teach others, I made the choice to become a teacher – either English or Art. And as much as I find solace in painting and drawing, ideas speak from my fingertips.
As an educator I am fervent about teaching students to express themselves with imagination and creativity – to stretch their minds and think about ideas in new ways. One means I use is a multi-genre approach to writing. For example, each Friday ninth grade students write in their ThinkBooks (developed by Dawn Hogue) practicing various genres. One genre may require them to interview someone in the class and then write that person’s biography. The student interviewed may choose to tell the truth and/or lie. Another genre of writing is a diary entry written from the point of view of a character in a novel or short story. These activities allow students to practice writing in various genres and differing point of view.
Many times I read my own short stories and essays aloud to my class as part of a pre-writing activity or as a model. Personally, I love writing with my students and sharing my work, but I don’t write for the purpose of publishing or for others to read it; I write for myself! However, I have found that there are definite benefits to allowing my students to hear and read what I have written. When I open myself up to my students in this way, I create a more intimate classroom environment. While I am still the teacher, I am now a writer just as they are writers. As I become vulnerable, I also become more human in their eyes. This allows me to create a classroom climate built on mutual understanding and respect for each other and our writing.
Sometimes being a writer makes it more difficult to be a teacher. As a writer I enjoy every aspect of the writing process – birthing and articulating ideas, even revisiting and tweaking sentence structure for the pure pleasure of how the words resonate within my mind. To me, who wouldn’t be overjoyed about using the thesaurus to discover new and fungible wordage?
Unfortunately, my passion can also be my downfall at times. I struggle with helping students who don’t like to write or worse, refuse to really try. I want my students to “get” my passion – for it to be contagious. I want them to wish for nothing more than a quiet space to dream and write. It is difficult for me to accept that as much as I try to make writing fun and creative, some students won’t like to write or will simply struggle with writing. Sometimes my lack of understanding makes me a poor teacher. Each day I work to overcome this flaw in my character – to understand those who have different talents and interests. Whenever possible I tap into those areas of students' personalities to get them to write, and sometimes this works, but other times it does not.
Despite the disinterest of some students, I believe they still need to learn how to communicate effectively in writing. When I think about how I learned to write, I don’t know that I can pinpoint a time or way in which I learned per se. However, my writing matured over time. I wrote regularly and fluency developed. Sure, I was taught basic grammar and punctuation, but I don’t think one can teach fluency by means other than providing opportunities to practice writing and revision. Even when I think back to those language worksheets middle school teachers seem to inundate us with, they never helped me learn to write or understand writing. Those worksheets were separate entities that didn’t seem to connect to actual writing assignments. Also, those worksheets did not teach me to develop voice or to consider audience when writing, both of which are essential to quality writing. When I think about my teaching and the dreams I have for myself and my students, I wish to find innovative ways to inspire students who do not desire to write, to cultivate a wide variety of strategies to teach writing to reluctant and struggling writers, and to gain compassion and understanding for those students who are uninterested in writing. Writing has been part of me for as long as I can remember, but as much as I take pleasure in writing, I also enjoy teaching, and to become a teacher of writing means to put my students before my passion.
FAVORITE LINKS
Christian Writers Guild
New Missions
Praise Fellowship Assembly of God
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
- Short story: "The Valedictorian" published in Farrago, Literary Magazine of Lakeland College, 2004
- Writing challenge winner: "In and Out, Out and In," placed 3rd in the weekly writing challenge
CONTACT ME
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