...the slightly sappy story behind guide words
by day i'm an english teacher and face all sorts of students, aged 11-16. i'm used to the jaded attitude that most of the kids have -- the school is rough and in a rough neighbourhood. apathy is their strongest survival tactic. so the odd bit of sensitivity is even more pronounced.
last week, a boy who must be about twelve comes up to me, fighting back tears. 'miss, i...i...i don't know what to do. i mean, i didn't mean it. i mean, i don't know how to make it all better.' he was holding something behind his back and shaking like a leaf. when i asked what was the matter, he revealed the book he was hiding.
he had been looking up his vocabulary words in a very worn dictionary from the class shelf. he couldn't find the word he was looking for and got frustrated and slammed the cover shut. the book was so overused that the binding snapped and as he picked it up from the desk, dozens of pages fell out.
the reason he was so upset was not that they fell out, but that he couldn't get them back in the right order. he is not a very able student with numbers or letters, and he knew that the pages had both page numbers and guide words but he just couldn't think straight long enough to put them right. but he had noticed that there were pages missing entirely, and he wasn't sure what to do with a book that was missing pages and had pages falling out everywhere. he said he was sure i would not want to throw a book in the rubbish.
it was such a warming moment and so rare. i told him a bit about this project, as most of my students are pretty aware of my art obsession, and asked what he thought about using the pages from the dictionary as the canvas for the AAAD challenge. he smiled and added 'there are 26 letters so you could use one for each day plus a few extra for your favourite words' which seemed like such a kismet idea.
so my theme is based more on supplies than content. mixed media on 'vintage' dictionary pages. end of story.