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By MIRIAM MOELLER,
Journal Staff Writer
ISHPEMING — “Baseball was my
life when I was younger. I ate, breathed, drank,
lived and dreamt baseball. It wasn’t the boys.
And it wasn’t the attention I got for being the
only girl. It was the thrill of the game, the
sounds of the crowd, and the feel of the glove
on my hand.”
Ishpeming High School junior Katelyn Hough, 16,
is the author of this excerpt from her story
“Home at Third” that appeared recently in the
school publication “Places.”
The little booklet contains 17 stories from
English teacher Tim Clancy’s three sections of
11th-grade students who wrote about the
significance of place.
“The idea was to get them to write an essay
using narration and description,” Clancy said.
“And the objective for them as a writer was to
convey the significance of this place, so the
reader would read it and see why it was
important to them.”
Clancy picked the best stories, asked one of his
students, Andrea Carello, to design cover art,
did the layout and had it printed at Globe
Printing.
Clancy said it’s beneficial for high school
students to have their work published.
“For one, it’s an artifact of their time in
school,” Clancy said. “It’s kind of like a
yearbook. It’s a sense of pride that they have
gotten published, which is not a common thing
for a high school kid.”
The stories deal with places in Ishpeming such
as the Bluff — a common hang-out for kids — Lake
Angeline, the baseball diamonds, the playgrounds
and camp, Clancy said. However, the booklet also
contains stories about places not in the Upper
Peninsula, such as exchange student Ricarny
Yosefin’s story about her hometown of Samarinda
in East Borneo.
“It gives insight in the common places the kids
grew up around,” Clancy said. “It’s an exercise
in reflection. It requires them to reflect about
what has meaning and value and why.”
Hough decided to write about the baseball
diamonds in Ishpeming where she spent many
summers playing baseball with the boys’ team.
“I miss it, but I remembered exactly how it
felt,” Hough said. “... just like the dust in
the air from the sliding, the sound of the ball
hitting the glove ... I felt like I belonged.”
Besides the joy of remembering her experiences,
Hough also improved her writing with the
assignment, she said.
Junior Victoria Nault, 16, decided to write
about her childhood home on 617 Bank St. in
Ishpeming and her favorite hiding place in the
attic.
“When you’re young, you’re more protected by
your parents and you have to find ways to
entertain yourself,” Nault said. “Actually in my
attic it was hollow behind the walls. I crawled
there and built forts.”
In her story that she titled “Wonder Walls,”
Nault describes how she used to pretend she was
“Indiana Jones on a jungle adventure” or “a
distressed and love-struck Rapunzel.”
“I talked about how the drywall was chalky,”
Nault said. “I had all my stuffed animals there;
I could make up situations. I could be ...
anything I wanted to be.”
Nault said it was nice to think of the memories
of the big, green house, but she also found the
process a bit sad because she misses her old
home.
“It brings me back to a time when my imagination
could entertain me, and I was never bored,” she
said. “I just realized how I have changed over
the years.”
She added that growing up has given her more
responsibilities and that the innocence and
imagination of childhood is fading with her
growing more mature.
“It’s kind of hard now that you have more
responsibilities,” she said. “(You) can’t play
that much, worrying about college now, a job.”
Clancy said every student who is published gets
a copy of the booklet, which is funded by the
school; however, the publication is not for sale
to the general public. Clancy keeps some copies
to show to future students with similar
assignments.
This article
was taken from the online version of the
Monday, April 9, 2007 Mining Journal.
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