The Genesis of the Sherlock Holmes Detective Club by Gloria Alden
I came to teaching
rather late in my life. After the death of my oldest son to cancer when he was
eighteen, I decided to do something with my life that made a difference so I
enrolled in college for the first time when I was forty-two years old. I chose
elementary education because working with kids was something I’d always done;
four children of my own in less than five years, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, CCD
at my church and even a short stint as a Head Start teacher. Even though I was
encouraged by some professors to change my goals towards teaching at the
college level or at least high school, I ignored them. I knew what age I wanted
to teach.
After graduating I got
a third grade position in a small elementary school in the college town of
Hiram, Ohio. I loved teaching this age and taught third grade for twenty years
before retiring to spend more time writing and gardening, and with other things
I enjoyed doing. Actually, I wanted to retire because the district we were in
consolidated all four elementary schools into a mega intermediate school that
required classes to switch so I no longer could have one group of kids I could
teach all day. In a school like that, I
couldn’t have taught what I did to create The
Sherlock Holmes Detective Club.
I did have a Sherlock
Holmes Detective Club in my classroom. I had numerous third grade level mystery
books with two or three copies of each. Once a day partners – or sometimes
three if we had an uneven number – would get together to read a chapter of the
book they were reading. They could go anywhere in the room and curl up
together. They had booklets I’d made where at the end of each chapter, they
told what had happened, the characters, problems, etc. When the book was
finished they were given a paper cutout of a boy or girl to write the title of
the book on as well as their names and it was posted on the wall near a large
laminated picture of Sherlock Holmes with his deer stalker hat and a
microscope.
One year as a writing
prompt, I brought in an old suitcase I claimed I’d found on my back steps that
morning. Afraid that the owner would claim I’d stolen something from it, I’d
brought it to school so the class and I could open it together and check it
out. The kids were so excited about that and some even got magnifying glasses
to look closely at the items. Most of what went on is in the book. One of the
few things not in the book is they never found out I conned them. At the
beginning because of older siblings or parents some had doubts, but as letters
came from all over the country, postmarked and unopened, (Thanks to family and
friends around the country who forwarded them.) they believed and became quite
worried at times about Alice Van Brocken. Ivy, the narrator in the chapters
with the class, did not really do the narrating. I added that, but Ivy was a
real student. Only her name was changed. Because I did this twice, about seven
years apart when I knew none in the class had older siblings to spoil the fun.
I saved the letters from both classes.
Of course, I couldn’t
include more than forty students in the book so I picked six girls and six boys
to use. All were actual students of mine, but I changed the names and some
details. Jose was actually a boy name Joe. For the most part, the letters are
what the students wrote, but sometimes I combined a few letters here and there,
or since the boy modeled on Andrew only sent along jokes a few times, I added a
joke with every one of his letters to keep his persona.
One of the highlights
of the year is when Alice Van Brocken actually visited during the last week of
school. Of course, there is no real Alice Van Brocken. She’s totally from my
imagination created a little like Mrs. Pollifax from that series of mysteries.
The Alice who showed up was my sister Elaine. She was in her early fifties and
not in her seventies like Alice, but kids think anyone older than their parents
is old. I warned Elaine that the students would want to see her demonstrate
karate and to tell them she’d injured her back when helping to capture the
jewel thieves in Seattle.
Elaine taught seventh
and eighth grade science in another country. Her school finished before ours
did. Both times she came when a student opened the door at her knock, she
swooped into the room beaming and wearing a full cotton skirt and a straw hat. Because
I’d sent her pictures of my students, she was able to identify a few and told
them how much she appreciated all the help they’d given her, etc.
When she took
questions, of course someone wanted to her to show them some karate moves. She
went into a serious spiel about how it was a discipline and not a form of
entertainment and then suddenly she let out a yell, flung out her arms in a
fake karate chop and gave a kick which her full skirt covered up the fake that
it wasn’t a real karate kick. The first time she did that, I almost lost it. It
was all I could do not to collapse in laughter, but the kids believed it. They
squealed and when a short time later it was time to pack up to take their stuff
out to the playground for a short recess before the buses came, instead they
all lined up to get Alice Van Brocken’s autograph.
Shortly before that, though,
she’d told them a friend who lived in The Netherlands wanted her to come over
and help her track down the thieves who were stealing very expansive tulip
bulbs. She went into some detail about that, too, but the kids all groaned when
she said she was going. They had worried about her the whole year and didn’t
want her to risk her life again.
Do I feel badly about
my con job? No. They learned to write letters. They became better readers. They
learned more about where different places were. And most of all, their
imagination was sparked and they became more caring and impressed with what one
brave woman was doing on her search for justice.
What goal did I have in
writing this book? I wanted to see classroom sets in classrooms with the
teacher reading Alice’s letters, and different students chosen each day to read
the letters and dialogues of the students in the book. The students could sit
as partners so even those not reading that day could silently read along. I
hope it happens in more and more classrooms, not so much because I want an
increase in sales as I want to see both teachers and students enjoying Alice’s
trip around the country.
Gloria
Alden’s Catherine Jewell Mystery series are The
Blue Rose, Daylilies for Emily’s Garden, Ladies of the Garden Club, and a
middle-grade book, The Sherlock Holmes
Detective Club. Her published short stories include “The Professor’s Books” in FISH
TALES, The Lure of the Rainbow in
FISH NETS, “Once Upon a Gnome” in STRANGELY FUNNY and “Norman’s Skeleton’s” in ALL
HALLOWS EVIL and several stories in the e-zine, Bethlehem Writers Roundtable; Mincemeat is for Murder and
The Body in the Red Silk Dress.
Her
short story “Cheating on Your Wife Can
Get You Killed” won the Love is Murder contest in 2011. She blogs every
Thursday on Writers Who Kill. She lives on a small farm in NE Ohio with
assorted critters, including two ponies, six hens, a barn cat, two house cats,
a canary, two ring-necked African Doves and her tricolor collie, Maggie.
Website:
www.gloriaalden.com
Thank you so much for visiting me today, Gloria. I loved this story--and I know the children in your class did too.
Marilyn
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