I Am Conferred As Reader

My mother taught me to read using a set of word cards. I can see her holding them up in front of me in the corner of the vicarage dining room in the winter-dark. I see myself as very small. Four, perhaps. Many significant things happened when I was four. The dog arriving, for example. 

The letters on the cards were large and some were red, some were black. That early evening, I knew I couldn't read, and it felt like a deficiency in me. 

As I pieced words together letter by letter, I sensed frustration in my mother. With four children under the age of ten, and the whole parish to consider, she was probably feeling the utter endlessness of her tasks. But back then I linked her anxiety to my reading.

In this memory, towards the end of the flashcard time, something fell into its place - maybe CAT or ANT or BOY or (to make things story-neat-and-tidy) DOG.  I read this word in one shot, understood something about its shape and relationship to sound. I noticed my mother being relieved about something. She put the cards away, and I don't remember ever seeing them again. 

The word I learned to spell deliberately and collaboratively, as a sort of family chorus, was the dog's tricksy name. "CHUMLEEEE," we'd chant. "C-H-O-L-M-E-L-E-Y!" It wasn't long after learning that words on the page and in the mouth can differ that I took off into reading big time. I lay on my bed, its granny-knitted white bedspread turned grey at the foot where the dog slept each night, spending wonderful afternoons with whole books. 

What's brought on this musing is my promotion in August to Reader at Wrexham University. The title has been conferred on me through a process of application, reference, and consideration of the evidence of my academic standing. I was able to choose my own title as part of the process - Reader in Creative Coproduction. It reflects the way I work with others to find new and collaborative ways of learning in social work education.

I like the word Reader. I like the word Confer. I like the way words have enabled me, reading, reading, speaking, and writing, to grow into the teacher-as-learner part of myself.

If I were making an acceptance speech I'd thank many people, especially (you know who you are) Outside In. I'd thank my colleagues and referees: Tim, Jill, and Neil. I'd thank my family, I'd thank Tove Jansson, C.S. Lewis, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and A.A. Milne. I'd thank my dog. 

And, at this point, I'd thank, most of all, my long-dead-but-never-left mother, for the precious time she spent with me: her gift of hard-won priorities, her wanting so much for me to be a reader.

Photo taken by the lovely Kate Lefroy