Category: Memory
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TBALL and a Hat
From Alison Bailey: UCB and UCLA played on the same team between 2003-2009 – perhaps a first! Of course this was the TBALL team (Technology Based Assessment of Language and Literacy). With many flights up and down the coast of California (and one nixed suggestion of meeting half way at The Cattleman’s Ranch in King…
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Cynthia Greenleaf: The generosity of David’s attention
From Cyndy Greenleaf: Truthfully I can’t recall the very first time I met David. I do know that I was surprised, and honored, that he agreed to serve as a discussant in a session Christine Cziko and I gave at AERA or NCTE or IRA some 20 years ago. We were reporting on the early…
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Trip to Napa and Sonoma
2004: From Susan Seilback David, Mary Alyce, Susan, and Shawn having a great time tasting and describing wines! Hilarious!
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Life in the Radical Middle
From Ruth Schoenbach: I first met David in the late 90’s at a national meeting where—on the side—I had a chance to show him a couple videos of interviews with 9th grade students that my colleague Cyndy Greenleaf had conducted as part of a 2-year teacher research project we were doing in SFUSD schools. He…
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How I became a teacher
In 1963, Mary Alyce and I did the same 3 things as all our close friends. We graduated from UC Berkeley (Cal in those days), got married, and moved on to a new life—Mary Alyce as a grad student in a post-baccalaureate MA credential program at Stanford and I as a newly minted member of…
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Keep your eye on the Flag
I entered the profession in 1964 during another period, not unlike several more recent cycles, in which we were so desperate for teachers that states would credential folks on a provisional basis if (a) they had a degree in anything and (b) were breathing. I sort of hate to admit that because I find the…
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Learning to Read… in first grade at Pleasant Prairie Grammar School
I went to a one room schoolhouse in the wide-open spaces of the Sacramento Valley in post-World War II California. In 1947, when I started first grade, all 42 of us-from first graders through eighth graders were taught by Mrs. Millsap, a matronly lady in her early sixties who was driven daily to and from…
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Where the P in “P David” comes from
This is the second installment of the name saga… Fast forward from Grade 1 to my sophomore year in high school. 16th birthday coming up in April of 1957. In the 1950s, turning 16 is a triple witching hour of sorts—have to get a driver’s license, register for Social Security, AND register for Selective Service…
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How I learned my real name…
The first week of first grade was especially hard for me. I was greeted with not one but two surprises, both of which were traumatic for my not very resilient 6-year-old ego. But first a word about my school—a classic prairie style one room schoolhouse in what were then, just after WWII, the wide open…