We’re excited to welcome middle grade author Alma Fullerton to the blog! Alma shares about her experiences as a young student and reader that led her to write books with characters that have learning differences, just like the main character in Flipping Forward Twisting Backward.
My husband and I recently moved from Ontario Canada to Prince Edward Island Canada. The very first night we got to our new house my husband found a large black buoy on the beach. Finding something like that on the first night raised his expectations to thinking that was a normal occurrence to find cool things on the beach every time you go. It is not. Since then we’ve walked the beached almost every day and haven’t found another buoy, or anything else he finds particularly cool. Beach hunts since then have been a little disappointing for him.
At the age of six, when I started first grade, my experience was very similar to my husband’s first day beach walk. Being the second youngest of seven children I was excited for school, and went in with the expectations to be able to learn all of the cool things my siblings already knew. The first day was great. I was one of the few kids that already knew the alphabet. In fact I could recite it forward and backward.
I felt brilliant.
In the months, even years, following I quickly became discouraged. I wasn’t learning all of the things my friends were learning. I was stuck on the reciting of the alphabet and I no longer felt brilliant.
I felt stupid.
Back then, teachers didn’t know much about learning differences like they do now. They often singled me out in front of the other students for messy writing, or not getting the words I was reading correct.
In first grade I was called lazy and a liar – when I told the teacher I was writing the letters the way I saw them.
In second grade I was told I’d never graduate if I didn’t stop rushing through my work.
By third grade, I stopped raising my hand to answer questions I knew the answers to. I wanted to shrink into the background and not be noticed by the teachers. If they didn’t notice me, they wouldn’t single me out, and I wouldn’t feel even more stupid than I thought I already was. Like my husband’s beach walks those first years of school were disappointing.
My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Monds finally figured out that I saw and learned differently than the other children in my class. She worked with me every day during recess to help me learn how to read and write. Yay for Mrs. Monds! She was the first teacher that ever believed me when I said, “This is how I see.”
With the help of Mrs. Monds and a few great librarians, I learned to love books and I knew I wanted to create books with these fantastic characters that other people would want to read about. When people told me I’d never be able to write books if I could barely read a book, it made me want to write even more – just to prove those people wrong.
Now I’m not only and author and illustrator I also work with children with learning differences, or other differences. I like to stress that every child can learn, it’s a matter of finding out how they learn. I also love to tell the children I work with to never allow what other people say determine how far you can go in life. It’s your life not theirs. Only you can determine that.
What I’ve learned about expectations in my lifetime is that if you go into things without any expectations at all and just enjoy the scenery along the way, you’ll always find treasures, whether it be a buoy, a pocket full of sea-glass or a teacher or person who believes in you more than you believe in yourself.