Below is an excerpt of an article about the inspiring teacher, Patty Gillespie, who was given passage through school without ever knowing how to read or write. The article chronicles her struggle from an illiterate youth to her prominence as a brilliant teacher and devotee of helping instill a love of reading in kids:
Teaching comes naturally to Gillespie, a small woman who wears dresses to school, smiles a lot and waves her hands when she talks.
So does giving. Gillespie, whose favorite book is Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree,” gives away hundreds of donated books at school each year.
Being a student wasn’t as easy.
Gillespie, who grew up in Massachusetts, loved to play “school” before she was old enough to go. By first grade, she couldn’t keep up with her classmates in reading lessons. It would be years before learning disabilities were diagnosed.
“You could show me pictures of apples and say the short ‘a,’ and I heard ‘uh,’ ” she said. “To just hear the isolated sounds didn’t work.”
Help was hard to come by in an era when special education was for severely disabled children. Private tutors used the same phonics lessons that teachers did, so they read Gillespie’s schoolbooks to her instead.
Gillespie, a popular student, carefully hid her problems from classmates. She raised her hand to answer questions only when everybody else did; when she was called on, she told teachers she’d forgotten what to say.
By high school, her English teachers asked the same question each year: How did you get here without knowing how to read or write?
“It may have been wrong, but I think teachers continued to pass me because I tried so hard,” she said.
Gillespie also made it into Westfield State College in 1971, despite low scores on the SAT college entrance exam.
Gillespie’s parents knew she struggled. Still, for her they wanted the education they’d never had.
Her father, an insurance salesman, had turned down a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania so he could support his family. “I just said, ‘Hey, without the degree you won’t get very far in life,’ ” said Gillespie’s father, Bob Watson, 89.
Gillespie lived at home and drove to campus for classes. She was just as lost there as she had been in high school. This time, she found little sympathy from teachers.
The closer Gillespie got to academic probation – she says she was two-tenths of a point away her first semester – the more she wanted to walk away from her college education.
She changed her mind after a stern warning from her father: If that’s what you want to do, then quit. But remember you’ll always be a quitter.
“That really changed my life,” she said. “I wasn’t going to let him down.”
Gillespie started with vowels, using the pronunciation key of a dictionary and pictures instead of sounds.
For short “a,” she envisioned a black cat; an ape for long “a.”
She studied in her bedroom, between classes, up to eight hours a day for a year. In the beginning, it took two hours to get through three paragraphs of a textbook. Gillespie wouldn’t let herself turn the page until she understood what she’d read.
Not once did she want to quit.
“I knew I could do it,” she said. “That was the first time in my life.”
The full article is slightly longer. I strongly recommend you read the full piece. What a teacher! What a story!
