Spotlight 4 Success
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Spotlight 4 Success
Discovering Family Heritage Through 1950s Japanese Letters
Letters have a unique power to transcend time, connecting us to voices from the past in ways that feel surprisingly immediate and personal. Karen Miller, an eighth-grade English language arts teacher at Maiden Middle School in North Carolina, discovered this firsthand when she inherited 250 letters written by family members from Japan to Pennsylvania in the early 1950s.
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Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. I am Devin Pintosa, your host. We are here at the NCMLE, that is, the North Carolina Mid-Level Educators Conference in Charlotte, north Carolina. We are here joined by Karen Miller, who is an educator here in North Carolina, but she is also at Maiden Middle School, but she is also a podcaster herself and she has a website called from McClay, from.
Speaker 2:McClay to.
Speaker 1:Zamacom, from mcleodazamacom, and she's going to share some information about that and about what she's doing and things that are going on and some ways that that applies to what she's doing here at NCMLE. Well, so welcome and tell us some about what you do.
Speaker 2:So it's important, for I'm an English language arts teacher for eighth grade and it's important that I think that teachers write as well and create as well as expecting their students to. So this project is from. I inherited 250 letters that were written in the early 1950s from Japan back to my family in Pennsylvania by my aunts, and it's great when I'm trying to teach historical fiction because I can talk about all the stuff I learned and how I integrate that into the podcast and maybe eventually in a historical fiction book. But I've learned so much about life in the 1950s and my family and myself.
Speaker 1:Wonderful and can you share some key takeaways from what you've learned your journey?
Speaker 2:I have learned that I'm way more like my crazy red-haired aunt than I thought I was, and I have learned that they think about so many of the same things. I'm 60. They were in their 20s and 30s but it's still relevant. Things from the 1950s are still relevant to my life and hopefully my listeners, and at the very least this is something I can leave for my four children and my grandchildren to know about their family, for people that they didn't know, who still love me and love them, and it's like the love of my family and the traditions just come out through these letters and make me feel still connected.
Speaker 1:That is so wonderful. You know, our last guest that spoke to us, who is also a podcaster, talked a lot about family connections that are built through this process. A lot of times it's the product of research and getting in front of relatives. You know whether they're living or no longer with us. In your case, you have a lot of letters, Is that right?
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Speaker 2:Yes, so these letters. I realized that my children, who are very smart, weren't going to be able to read the cursive, Because I grew up reading that cursive and one of them, their handwriting is just horrible, and so I thought, well, I'll transcribe it. So I have a book of these letters now that I'm creating. That's hundreds of pages.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And then I try to like make explanations for things, do research about things that they talk about and, for instance, I found out that hydroponics, which I'm really into, I have, like the garden everywhere right beside my podcasting equipment where I grow my spices. That was developed in Japan as a result of the starvation that people were experiencing after World War II.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing and all those touch points with history and flowing through with your family. And now, here you are, doing your own podcasting.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I'm related to President McKinley? Oh wow. So I have another one in pre-production where we're going to do all historical fiction, because I don't have letters or anything, I just have artifacts and the family Bible and all that stuff about connections to that family.
Speaker 1:Oh that's wonderful that one's going to be called Deep Below, deep Below. All right, that's wonderful, that's great. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the NCMLA community?
Speaker 2:This is a great opportunity. I'm excited. I've always wanted to go to this conference. I've been teaching for 25 years and this year my awesome principal said do you want to go to the middle school conference?
Speaker 1:I was like, yes, yes, yes, I do. That's great and I've seen a lot of friends and teachers that taught my children oh wow.
Speaker 2:So it's great being here.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's great. It's a full 360. Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome Again. This is Karen Miller, and she is here with us from Maiden Middle School in North Carolina and she is also the podcaster with the podcast called.
Speaker 2:From LeClay to Zama.
Speaker 1:From LeClay to Zama. From LeClay to Zamacom. Thank you so much for participating with us today and I hope you have a great rest of the conference here.
Speaker 2:Thank you.