E-DOT

I was a teacher, a young one, and not yet very good at my trade.

I was also a father, with a son named Martin, whom my wife and I took swimming when he was about five months old. He took to the water like he remembered his first nine months.

Somewhere in his third year I thought I might introduce him to diving.

But…

But I did not do the traditional, “Martin, we’re going to learn to dive, so stand here on the edge of the pool, raise your hands over your head, shove off, and drop hands-and-head-first into the pool.”

We started with Martin holding my hands and jumping into the pool. It was not long until he was jumping in without holding my hands.

Then came a period of jumping in… climbing out… jumping in… climbing out – a period I began to think would never end.

Until one night. Martin had done his jumping in… climbing out routine for a while, and then, after a brief meditative communion with the water, he raised his hands over his head and launched himself into a dive. First attempt, a technically perfect dive.

Without quite realizing that I was doing it, I allowed that experience to wander around with my other musings, and eventually came up with an explanation – not of what I had done, but of what Martin had done.

For whatever reason, diving became what his young spirit convinced him he ought to do, and from there he worked the process out in his mind and his body. And then he simply dived.

Meantime, I was metaphorically sucking on my thumb and cogitating the journey Martin and I had taken together – the process, if you will, and what I came up with was what I now shorthand as E-DOT – Environment. Direction. Ownership. Time.

Martin’s Environment was the YMCA swimming pool and our fellowship.

His Direction was diving – not that he was told to dive, but that he found that he wanted to.

The project – learning to dive – was Martin’s. He had Ownership of the learning process.

In addition, Martin had the Time he needed. Not the artificial and arbitrary time period established by someone else, but the time his spirit told him he needed.

E-DOT.

It’s how we learn. 

 

Writing Mentor: It's what I do

Writing is my life, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.

I remember the first time I imagined myself as a writer. I was in fourth grade, and as I sat at my desk with all my schoolwork finished, I allowed my imagination to take me back to the brief period in 1860-1861 between Abraham Lincoln’s election to the presidency and his inauguration. I was a reporter for a Northern newspaper writing from somewhere in the South and I wrote a dispatch for my newspaper, reporting that the time was dire, and that a war could start at any time.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that imaginary newspaper article sealed my fate: I would be a writer. I went to college, graduated with a degree in education and teaching certification – and no desire to teach. My first job was as a reporter for the largest newspaper in Illinois outside of Chicago.

I stayed with journalism for a while, then took a job as a sixth-grade teacher, and finally, after wandering in the desert called “Middle Age,” began the course I am, at the age of 79, still on: combining writing and teaching.

It’s what I do.

I basically work one-on-one, and there’s always room for one more.

I'm always available - johnoverbeck42@gmail.com - 513-476-4963.

Blitzing COVID

 

Well, here we are. Right where we had hoped we wouldn’t be.

The new school year is beginning, and COVID has once again reared its ugly, dangerous, and too often deadly head.

To make matters more confusing and contentious, a battle is in progress over masks: Should our children be compelled to wear masks in school, should masks be optional, or should they be prohibited altogether?

For parents of junior high and high school students who are concerned about their daughters’ and sons’ safety in academic situations, I am offering small-group online instruction designed to help us through the current COVID blitz.

I am a writer and a teacher with a good many years of experience in both professions. I am primarily a writing mentor, but I am also an experienced teacher of both history and literature.

My rates are very reasonable, and I have never turned a student away for financial reasons. Nor will I ever.

If you believe your child or children would benefit by working with me – please contact me either at johnoverbeck42@gmail.com, or at 513-476-4963, and we will have a conversation.

I have in the past worked to coordinate my work with school curricula in such a way that full academic credit is given for work I do.

If you believe I can be of assistance to your child or children, I look forward to hearing from you.

In the next few days I will post some comments I have gotten through the years for my work with students.

First Things First - Part One

 

I’m a teacher and a writer, my experience practicing my crafts goes back a good many years, and I still teach and write most every day. 

But before you mentally turn me out to pasture, please allow me to tell you a little story.

I had accepted a teaching position at a school that will always be dear to my heart – The Schilling School for Gifted Children in Cincinnati, Ohio. One day, shortly after I began my tenure at Schilling, I gave out with one of the off-the-wall statements I am – for good or ill – somewhat known for:

“One of my goals,” I pronounced, “is to become Schilling’s first 80-year-old faculty member.”

I was at the time a couple years short of 60.

The words were hardly out of my mouth when one of my students offered a snarky comment with a friendly gotcha twist: “Mr. Overbeck, in your case that’s a kind of short-term goal, isn’t it?”

That was some years ago, and I’m getting closer.

I have kept in touch with that student, and I am planning… Oh I am planning! 

This, of course, is all in fun.

But what is serious is that I am a writing mentor. I still work every day – one-on-one or with small groups – allowing and nurturing students as they develop their writing voices and skills.

I’m always available for a free consult at: johnoverbeck42@gmail.com, and you can catch my column every Thursday after 8:00 a.m.

Thursday morning then…