Your Turn: Christy Huddleston

From Christy by Catherine Marshall
Nominated by Rebecca Briley

Growing up in a literary family, I read everything I could find, drawn especially to female characters who were teachers: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anne of Green Gables, Jane Eyre--the list is long. But the deepest impression was made by Catherine Marshall's Christy, a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in the Smokey Mountains at the turn of the century. Overcoming squeamish distaste for native customs with unadulterated love for Fairlight Spencer and Little Burl, Christy Huddleston, c'est moi.

I longed to teach in a one-room schoolhouse, nourishing some impoverished Appalachian child with the love of reading. Never having that opportunity, I have managed to teach elsewhere: Kentucky, Europe, the Marshall Islands, and finally even Turkish students in North Cyprus. My students always remark they have never had a teacher like me: one who loves her subject and students so equally and overtly. I have Christy to thank for that. As they say, if you can read this, thank a teacher. I do--all of them who taught me to love literature and to share that love with others.

Tags: Independent Women | Romantic Heroes | TV | Working Women

3:11 PM ET | 01-30-2008 | permalink

comments | | e-mail