Wed. August 21st, 2019

Red letter day!  Chapters'  bookstore in downtown Ottawa had a book signing for Amanda's book, Love Lives Here! I arrived half an hour before it started and got a standing place behind the rope separating the seating area from the rest of the area! The place was absolutely packed - a fitting tribute for Amanda!! Her speech was awesome - inspiring and personal and articulate - I'm just immensely proud of her!! I waited afterwards to get her to sign a copy of her book for me (had to buy a hard copy for this purpose Grade 10 student in my writing class!  I remember her first assignment - when I realized what a treasure I had in my classroom!  I had  her come in after school and tried to explain to her what a gift she had. She was on a different planet - no, galaxy - from the other members of the class!  The Grade10 Writing class was a compulsory course, and my goal was to teach kids the basics of communicating in writing - so my focus was on word choice, a sense of audience, grammar, spelling, paragraph structure, emphasis - that sort of thing.  Amanda had clearly mastered all of that stuff already - her writing was effortless.  I told her that she would not be learning to write in my class; she would be experimenting with different styles of writing - and I would "mark" her as hard as I could and give her as much feedback as I could, because she deserved that courtesy!  When I marked class assignments, I used to put hers on the bottom of the pile - first, so that I wouldn't be comparing everybody else's writing to hers; second, because that was my treat at the end of the marking session! Amanda was a writer back then; I'm so glad that she has kept writing - and her writing is having such an impact on individuals and on society in general!