As an administrator, I worked with other professors and
administrators. As an instructor of graduate creative writers and
upper-division English majors, I was teaching students who also loved
words and writing, students who aspired to be what I was, a published
author employed in a bookish field.

Believe me, I am no longer preaching to the choir. My
general-education students don’t aspire to be writers, and few of them
love words. “I never liked reading” is a confession I hear almost as
often as “I’m terrible at writing.”

In one sense, that’s a huge hurdle for me to overcome as a teacher.
But I feel a missionary zeal about these students. If I can convert some
future elementary-school teachers into lovers of children’s books, I’ve
made a difference not only in their lives, but also in the lives of
their young students. —Lee Tobin McClain, Chronicle of Higher Education

To celebrate the sale of this article, Lee bought us (her Humanities colleagues) a round of drinks at the Red Star.