//|\\ jill harbeck \\|//
Spelling Be
Because language and thought are inextricably linked, language instruction
becomes a key site where dominant ideology is reproduced-or disrupted.
— Ann George (94*)
As soon as I walk in the door after another crushing day at work, my daughter rushes at me, pelting me with questions. “Mommy, how do you spell wizard?” she asks, grabbing my pant leg before I can even get my coat off. “And what’s this word?” waving the Harry Potter book clutched in her other hand. “What’s a m-u-g . . .?” She hesitates, struggling to remember the rest of the letters. Meanwhile, I’m struggling to get out of my coat. “Not now, honey,” I say, trying not to the let the sharp edge that’s cutting through my brain slice through my words, too.
“But Mommy!” A plaintive cry I’ve heard too often. But Mommy, you’re always busy. But Mommy, you said. But Mommy . . . I’d thought that once I got my dissertation done and landed a salaried position, things would ease up. “No more homework, no more books,” chanted the child in my head. No more indeed. I had sixty assignments to read and critique from the lecture hall course they gave me, fifteen essays from the writing workshop I was handed when the professor who was supposed to teach it took a leave of absence, a report to draft for the curriculum committee I’d been “asked” to join, a paper I had to finish in time for an upcoming conference, a journal article that lay half-drafted on my desk even though I had promised the editor I’d have to her weeks ago, and a book that I’d barely begun to sketch out, even though I knew I had to “publish or perish.”
“MOMMY!”
“What!?”
“How to you spell magician?”
“Go look it up in the dictionary,” my mother said, clearly annoyed that I had disrupted her vacuuming.
“But Mommy!”
“Not now, I have to get the cleaning done before your father gets home.” Always the cleaning, or the grocery shopping, or the laundry, or the ironing. Always the housework. “Her floors are so clean you could eat off them.” That’s what people said, but nobody ever did. My mother would pitch a fit if someone got food on her sparkling floor. “I just washed that this morning,” she’d huff, and off she’d go for a bucket and sponge.
I’m not sure how I learned to read before starting school since I can’t remember a moment when my mother wasn’t tied up with housework. Inevitably when I’d get stuck with spelling and ask for help, she’d say, “Go look it up in the dictionary.” In one of my braver moments I’d retorted, “If I knew how to spell it I wouldn’t have to look it up.”
“Do you want your mouth washed out with soap?” Always the soap, the cleaning, the endless list of chores to do around the house. Never time to read with me, to answer the burning questions that arose as I struggled to gain mastery over this thing called language. I should have it so easy as my mother did. She had the luxury of staying home and being a housewife while her husband took care of money matters. I was raising a daughter by myself. That’s why I had persisted in graduate school, tired of struggling to make ends meet in low-paying, dead-end jobs that brought me little financial gain let alone any personal satisfaction.
“MOMMY!”
“What Marjorie,” I said, pushing back the pressure that threatened to explode into the room all of the thoughts that swirled in my brain. Sixty homework assignments, fifteen essays, committee report, journal article, conference presentation, book. The list was endless.
“How do you spell Hufflepuff?”
“Go look . . . let’s go look it up in the dictionary,” I said, determining not to be my mother, my housework-indulgent-mother-who-didn’t-have-time-for-her-daughter. Marjorie darted over to the desk, grabbed the dictionary and raced back to me, clearly delighted that I was going to help her solve this new mystery. Together we opened it and turned the pages, saying as we searched, “h - u - f - f . . .” But directly after huff came hug. No hufflepuff. “Are you sure that’s the right word, honey?”
“Yes,” Marjorie insisted, “it’s in my book, Louella said so.” Louella, the neighbor who pinch-sits when my regular doesn’t show. Why did she have to give Marjorie a Harry Potter book? Why couldn’t she have given her something more age appropriate? And what the heck was a hufflepuff?
“It’s not in the dictionary so I don’t think that’s a real word,” I explained.
“Yes it is, Mommy,” Marjorie said, her voice rising in a way that meant she was about to pitch a fit.
Sixty homework assignments, fifteen essays, bills to pay, laundry to do, time to put Marjorie to bed.
“Time for bed, Marjorie.”
“But Mommy!”
“No buts! Go get into your pajamas and I’ll come tuck you in.”
While she’s changing I manage to whip off a couple of checks to take care of bills that have piled up. Then I quickly sort the laundry before going upstairs. Sixty homework assignments, fifteen essays.
“Harry Potter is a boy wizard,” I hear Marjorie saying as I approach the door to her bedroom. Then silence. I ease up to the door and peer in to see what’s going on. She’s pretending to read to her doll and apparently the doll is saying something back. I lean in to listen. “Go look it up in the dictionary,” Marjorie says.
Sixty homework assignments and most will be riddled with spelling errors. It’ll be better once I get tenure.
But we need stories of failure, too—stories that keep expectations realistic,
stories that enable the ongoing self-critique essential for sound pedagogy.
—Ann George (98*)
* George, Ann. "Political Pedagogy: Dreaming of Democracy." In A Guide
to Composition Pedagogies, edited by Gary Tate, Amy Rupiper and Kurt Schick,
92-112. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.