Norwayne teacher, students produce, publish two books
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on June 3, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/PHYLLIS MOORE
Sixth-grade students in Michelle Rutledge's language arts class at Norwayne Middle School have had their stories and poems published in two books this school year as part of a writing project.
Michelle Rutledge did not set out to create another Hemingway or Maya Angelou. She simply wanted to encourage her sixth-grade language arts students to take more of an interest in reading and writing.
A bulletin board in the back of her classroom at Norwayne Middle School bears the heading, "There's a book for that," a variation on the smartphone-driven tagline, "There's an app for that."
She has spent the bulk of the school year nudging her classes to put pencil to paper, or fingers to keyboard, with an eye toward publishing their work. The project was primarily to sharpen writing skills while developing a greater appreciation for reading.
It started with a short story.
Turner Bass wrote about his own experiences playing football from the time he was little. But instead of focusing solely on his love of the game, he wove in another lesson learned -- adapting when teammates move away and others come on board.
Isabella Lewis penned a tale about what she learned while staying with her grandmother about the grandfather who had died years before. Unlike Turner's, though, her story was pure fiction, using elements of her favorite writing genre, mystery and ghosts.
"I wrote a story about a girl who moved to Michigan," said Aleyna Marketto, creating a romantic tale involving the young man her main character encountered.
After a lesson on character development, Steven Oxendale decided to take readers on a journey of a young man looking for his parents.
"I wrote about this super hero kid that visited people and different things. He had a hoverboard," Drew Sean Carter said.
All of their work made the cut into the class book, "Snapping Turtle Tales," a collection of student stories published earlier in the school year.
A second book, a compilation of 50 poems culled from Mrs. Rutledge's classes, will be released as the school year wraps up. She is planning a poetry reading to coincide with the arrival of "Wonders of the Young."
The teacher's own life would make a good story itself.
The 30-year-old took a circuitous route to becoming an educator.
After graduating from Mount Olive College, she and husband, Nick, now youth pastor at The Lord's Table, spent a few years in Ohio. When they returned to the area, she took a job at her alma mater but didn't feel fulfilled, she said.
"I started talking to these candidates, people coming in for lateral entry (teaching)," she said. "I thought, I probably should do this.
"I was supposed to be helping them come into school. It started being about me."
She decided to take some of the advice she was doling out to potential teachers, and made an appointment with human resources in Wayne County Public Schools.
"It was just a couple weeks before school started (in 2013). I think I made my decision the first of August, it was like a crazy month," she said.
The idea of being a teacher had always been nestled in the back of her mind, she said. She hadn't obtained the credentials in college, which was why the lateral entry concept held some appeal. She could leverage her degree to be in the classroom while completing her certification at the same time.
Now in her second year of teaching language arts, this school year has been especially brimming with excitement.
The mother of two delivered her third child in December, all while completing her credentials as a teacher and editing her students' work.
"Snapping Turtle Tales was finished in November and we got copies to the students right before Otto was born in December," she said. "I finished that class, my last class (for certification) and submitted my final exam the evening before Otto was born."
Her baby is now six months old, joining siblings Fritz, 5, and Greta, 3.
Like most mothers, she is learning to strike a balance in the role, both at home and in the classroom.
"I feel like I'm hard on the kids. I don't feel like I'm their buddy," she said of the latter, bolstered by what she says has been "confirmation after confirmation that this is where God wants me to be."
She said she has been blessed with good feedback, from both students and their parents, citing the e-mails saying that their child now enjoys reading. Students agreed that a by-product of the lesson had been a more avid interest in both writing and reading.
"I didn't think it was going to be as hard as it was," said student Cassidy Sauls.