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My short term memory has been tested at a fifty percentile; not very conducive to learning how to read, since reading depends so much on memorization. Both the spelling and the meanings of words too often escaped me. The image I now have of my early experience as a reader is of a tiger jumping out at me from a book. I was so frightened of the task of reading; I crossed my eyes whenever I was forced to read, making the task impossible.
However, I loved to sing and had a reasonably good voice. And luckily for me, my choir teacher, recognized this, and used love of music as a tool to get me to read, if only songs. She encouraged me to sing, and invited me, periodically, to lead the school choir in a song. Since I loved singing and most other kids (especially the boys) did not, I ended up on a more level playing field. The task of reading songs was also made easier because I only had to concentrate on a few words at a time and did far more listening than actual reading. Rhyme, rhythm, and the fact that others, particularly my choir teacher, liked my singing, also made the learning process easier, so much so that at choir practice, my fear of reading never raised its ugly head. If it were not for my choir teacher, I might never have learned to read, and ultimately would not have become a writer.
I was in grade eight when the importance of reading suddenly hit me like a baseball bat across the back of the head. The principal at our school, Mr. H. D. Veres, called me into his office. He warned me against taking Liberal Arts in high school, and said that Industrial Arts was best for me. “Robert,” he concluded rather sadly, “you’ll never graduate from high school, let alone university.” I was shocked, but I also knew the facts – I was a lousy reader. At the time, I didn't know what Liberal Arts was, and had nothing against Industrial Arts, but knew the latter was not for me. So I decided to change my ways and learn how to read. But how? By that time, I was so far behind, it seemed impossible.
The strange thing was; the answer came from a grade school drop-out.
At age sixteen, I had a summer job with a tile company. One day, we were short of work, so I was loaned out to another contractor to level gravel in the basement of a newly built house. A truckload of gravel had been dumped through a basement window. I was given a rake and shovel and told to get to work, levelling the gravel. I didn’t mind the work; I enjoyed physical labour. But there was a problem.
As far as I know, back in the mid-sixties, at least in Ontario, where I lived, there was no such thing as portable toilets; and it was the custom of construction workers, at that time, to use the mounds of gravel in unfinished basements to do their business. I soon found proof of this buried in the gravel and almost lost my breakfast.
To get the job done, I had to concentrate on something else.
Much to my surprise, I started writing a poem - in my head. It wasn’t a long poem, so, I worked it and re-worked it throughout the day. Whenever I thought I had finished, and remembered the smell, I dug back into my poem, re-writing. When all of the gravel was raked flat, I ran upstairs for a breath of fresh air.
I was soon heading home in the company van with the foreman of the tile company driving. It was a long drive. Part way, I remembered my poem, found an old envelope on the floor of the van, and brushed off the dry mud. I found a broken pencil in the ashtray, bit it to a rough point, and scribbled down my poem. When I had finished, the foreman asked what I had written. Utter embarrassment!
I stuffed the envelop into my pocket, then leaned my head against the right front window of the van, pretending, as any self-respecting teenager would have done, that I was deaf. After a few tries, the foreman pulled to the side of the road and said, “We aren’t going anywhere until you answer my question. What did you write?” After a lot of groaning, on my part, I admitted that I had written a poem. But he didn’t stop there. No, he poked and he prodded, until finally out of desperation, I read the poem to him. I expected him to laugh at me. He didn’t.
“Wonderful!” he said.
I was shocked.
“How many poems have you written?”
“Just one.”
“I quit school when I was in grade two, but, I think you’re a poet.”
I’d never heard anything like it before in my life. Someone had told me I was something; not that I couldn’t read and was stupid, but that I was a poet. What a gift, a gift I would never forget. He turned my life around, for he saw in me something no one, not even me, had ever seen before. He saw potential. He empowered me. It took years of reading, yes reading, and a lot of it, before I was able to write as good a poem as I did that first day. And it took even longer, until long after I had graduated from university, (Yes, I did go to university, and I did graduate) to figure out how I was able to write that first poem.
It was all because my choir teacher. She had encouraged me to sing, and through singing, I not only learned how to read, I had also learned about rhythm and rhyme, and how to put them together with meaning to create a poem. Without her, I would never have been able to write that first poem. Without her, I may never have learned the basics of reading, or have become fascinated with reading. And without her, I probably would never have become a writer. So, my choir teacher was a gift-giver too, the first of many.
There are many young people today, young adults included, who are very much like I was when I was young. Reading for them is either a chore, something foreign, something frightening, or all three. They are second language students, some of them refugees; children from broken homes; or children whose parents have never been readers themselves, so never read to their children. I feel it my duty and joy to pass my love of both reading and music on to as many young people as possible.
Mark, if my story is chosen for your competition, I will be very pleased to pass it on to a school, anywhere in BC, a school that could use the money to upgrade their existing music program or would like to create one. It would be a gift not only from CBC, but also from the choir teacher, who passed on both the gift of music and the gift of reading on to me. It doesn’t matter how we help others to find the path to reading. All that matters is the first step.
A Gift from Music first appeared in Teacher (BCTF), winter 2007
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