The Miss Dennis School of Writing (R)

My name is Miss Dennis. I am now a retired high school creative writings teacher, as you may have read in Alice Steinbach’s essay. When I became a teacher, I never had the intention of becoming so idolized by any of my students. My goal was to pull the writer out of every child. “Pay attention to what is going on around you, find your own voice”, I would say to my students. I beat it into their brains so that, if nothing else, they would apply that into their writing and their stories. This especially pertained to Alice as a student, who had a hard time incorporating this idea. Even so, I always saw great potential in her. My objective was to enhance my students’ levels of writing and to make sure that they took every opportunity they were given.

In college I majored in English. I spent all of my time reading and writing and finding ways to expand my ways of writing by studying authors and poets to whom I admired most. My last year of college, I was presented with an extraordinary opportunity to have a book I had written published and potentially known worldwide through a school-sponsored competition. Every candidate had to submit an essay and I was one of the top two contenders for the prize. However, when the winner was chosen, I fell short. My essay was returned to me with the errors later in the week, and with it, I was told that I had focused more on my ambitions and my own voice rather than the voice of others, I may have had ultimately prevailed. Even to this day, I still wonder what could have been.

However different my life may have been, I do not regret how my life has turned out. From my own life lesson, I have been able to teach my students the importance of putting themselves into their writing. I always pushed my students to do the best they could, whether I had to chase them around the classroom and threaten then with a yardstick or sit with them while they grieved about their losses, as Alice describes in The Miss Dennis School of Writing. As I said, I presumed that I would be this respected by one of my students; however, it gladdens me to know that my teachings did not go to waste. I am exceptionally proud to have been an inspiration to Alice Steinbach.