Down a long country road, in a curve by Blackberry Bay, where the pond backs up to the woods, there sits a one room habitat with a porcelain top table holding a Gateway. It is there that I tap the keyboard and enter a whole new world, my virtual classroom. It is there that I cease being a secluded grandmaw, a hermit baking homemade oatmeal cookies in a tiny oven, and become a tutor who really wants to change the planet.
I was born in the stormy home of hurricanes and grew up begging for scratch paper and pencil nubs in my own grandmother's handmade home in Paradise, Louisiana. My love for writing and words in general is as natural to me as the deep piney woods of central Louisiana. The only vacation my family ever went on when I was a child was to the fishing village of Cameron, Louisiana, which was recently 80 percent destroyed by Hurricane Rita. It was there at Holly Beach, that I learned that there was something besides dirt roads and hickory nut trees lined with gray clouds.
My journey through Catholic education resulted in a love for ministry. So, it is quite appropriate that I not only earned a B.A. in English education from Louisiana College, but also a masters in ministry from Seattle University. In fact, I have never stopped going to school since I started the first grade! I am gifted certified, able to supervise student teachers, and have completed 50 + hours on my doctorate in creative writing at University of Louisiana at Lafayette. I will also finish my TEFL certificate this month. Through all this, I have worked on educational reform and published books and journal articles related to that topic. I want people to see that education enriches life.
All that education is not what I am all about. I love what education can do. I love the magic that it makes. And living in the most illiterate state in the union challenges me to make a difference. After teaching for over 30 years, I currently enjoy doing adjunct work for various colleges, creative writing workshops and ministerial work with the elderly.
Writing always fits in. I am currently editing a book of poems about the two recent hurricanes, written by victims, volunteers and observers. Submissions have been received from all over America and the book will be published in conjunction with the Arts and Health Council locally. Hopefully, it will be of great therapeutic value.
My true love is for my precious daughter who is an artist, (We collaborated on a children's book, Coute Le LuLu, where she did the pen and ink drawings and I wrote the text.) her husband who teaches algebra and my four delightful grandchildren. They live in the Cajun main house, just past the fire pit and up the red brick road. Their dog Speck, a lively Catahoula, lives in a pen about three yards from my front door. He recently kept me company through the power outages, until I had to evacuate.
I have been a widow since I was 20. Some might think this is a lonely life, spending long afternoons in a white wooden chair on the front porch, watching the sky go from pale blue to soft pink. Thoreau knew what good this does for the soul.
The students I tutor seem to always think that I am in a New York skyscraper while teaching them. Little do they know that on any given day, my only visitor is a water moccasin or a brown rabbit or an armadillo. When I tell them that I am near the swamp, the chat box just gets quiet. Then they recover with, "Wow!"
I love tutoring for tutor.com. I am always excited to plug in the line and turn on the computer that transports me to a dynamic world where young people are just electric with needing to know something. And I am grateful that I have enough in my old head to respond to them. After all, it really doesn't matter so much where I am; it matters where they will go.