52 Ancestors Week 36: Off to School

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 36:

The theme for Week 36 is “Off to School.” Any teachers, principals, school nurses, school librarians, bus drivers, or lunch ladies in the family tree? What about someone who was really into their school spirit? 

Rocking a "Transformers" lunchbox like it was 1985.

   Fun fact: The picture I used for this week's banner was likely taken exactly forty years ago. I started elementary school in 1985 and it was a wild ride ever since. It's pretty easy to date that photo since the lunchbox I have in my hand gives everything away. I wonder if I still have that "Transformers" lunchbox somewhere. It was the epitome of cool if you had one in those days and were of a certain age like I was. All in all school was pretty cool despite kids being cruel sometimes. I've always liked school in spite of the many difficulties I had and I think I owe a lot of that feeling to the people in my family tree.

    In my family tree, I have many people who were teachers. My father once taught classes to grad school students while he was in school to become a dentist. My sister-in-law Kathleen is a professor at James Madison University in Virginia and even her parents were teachers. My dad's cousin Joe was a music teacher. I could go on and on. If I had the choice to talk about one of them, I think I'll talk about my sister-in-law. Her ears are going to be burning before she reads this week's blog! Yes, I'll be sure to link it to her once I hit that "publish" button.

Jim and Kat's engagement pic!

    Doctor Kathleen Grammatico-Ferraiolo actually comes from a long line of teachers since both of her parents were teachers themselves. From an early age, she learned the importance of a good education and her parents were both more than willing to help her with various assignments while she was growing up.

    One assignment she had was to research her family history and her parents helped her  to create what was a huge binder full of reports and family stories. Any genealogist I know would fawn over the details, pictures and an stories in that binder!

    Being a genealogist, I asked to see it when I was told of its existence and I asked Kathleen if it was okay to research her family tree and see if the stories in it were true or not. Like my family own story, it was pretty much true. Her family story mirrored my own as her dad's family came from Sicily and Campania while her mother's side hails from Ireland.

    When you visit New England, you're going to find a lot of people with both Irish and Italian backgrounds. Similar shared experiences tend to bring people together.

   Long before I ever looked at that family history report I met Kathleen in the fall of 1995. My brother had just started his college career at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. Their friend Mike introduced them and they've been together ever since. Kathleen was a political science major at the time and was on the fast-track to becoming a teacher. I didn't know it at the time. But, she was going to end up teaching me a valuable lesson.

    When I graduated high school in 1997, I had no idea what my major was going to be at Merrimack College. I was accepted there and I had no idea what I wanted to study. Admittedly, I panicked. I think anyone in my place would have and if you said you didn't I'd say you were a lying liar from Liartown, Liariana.

A few feet away from where history
took flight.

    Kathleen took me aside one day and told me to focus on my strengths and that just so happened to be history. I always did pretty well with history in school and she encouraged me to continue my studies.  In a way, Kathleen was like a big sister to me at that moment. She still is! She was always there to provide me with some excellent advice and once studying history in college got to be a bit too much for me, she suggested political science as it combined history with events that were happening in the present day.

    I ended up switching my major thanks to her and I was better for it. My grades improved and my mood changed. When I was studying history in college, I found that the professors expected me to repeat everything they said word for word in essays. I was always taught to write using my own words. I didn't feel right using someone else's words and that's why I struggled in the history department. Thankfully, Kat said I should change my major as I was in danger of failing!

    I owe Kathleen a lot because I ended up doing very well in political science. The professors appreciated me writing things in my own words and I was honestly a lot more comfortable doing papers in my own style and not using someone else's words. It's still a big no-no to me. If there's a notable on Wikitree  I want to write about like comic legend Stan Lee, I will write the bio with my own words and not rely on Wikipedia.

Mom and Kat

    Kathleen eventually got her doctorate in political science at the University of Virginia a few years after I graduated college. She then became a professor at James Madison University where she teaches students about the finer points of U.S. government. As a political science major, I can only wish her good luck on that front. And that's all I can say about that. 

    The interesting thing is how the field of genealogy employs history and political science together. When I discovered the connection, I told Kathleen about it and she agreed that both fields of study play very well with each other. In genealogy, you have to understand why someone moved to a certain area because of events happening in the world at that time for example. Circumstances in the world bring families together and that's how everyone's family tree gets made. 

    Kathleen really inspired me to work hard in my studies. Whenever I had a question, she would answer it. Whenever I had a paper to work on, she would offer me pointers and suggest other opinions I hadn't considered. One of my favorite papers to write were papers where we'd take on both view points and pretend to be the other side of an argument. That was where the creative juices flowed the most! We'd take sides and present each point of view and that helped me to create some pretty amazing papers. I really wish I saved them! Those were written several computers ago and are now lost to the sands of time.

    My sister-in-law  really helped me a lot in not just my scholastic career. She's just an amazing friend and I'm glad to have her in my life as an older sister. I have two older "sisters" and like Jennifer, Kathleen can always be counted on for a sympathetic ear or someone to talk about school with. I once had the opportunity to watch her teach a class and I saw that she taught the kids the same way she taught me lessons all those years ago. I've got to say with teachers like Kathleen around, the future is in good hands.

See ya next time!