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ELLEN MIN MASTEN
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>>>>As the youngest child and a daughter to boot, I was lucky not to have been named just plain Tertia (or Third), as the Romans would have done. At least with a proper name, and one that not only came from my paternal side by maternal as well, I eventually learned to talk for myself. Nevertheless, falling so low on the Masten blood-chain, I always felt I had been robbed of my fair share of the artist/writer gene and therefore feigned negativity and boredom to hide my incredible lack of natural talent.
>>>>Having gained such a reputation or lack there of, I turned to wandering the globe. Never staying in one place more than three years at a time, I started, as my dear old Dad loves to say, in the bowels of Mexico and ended up here, in ‘Joysey’ with earth daughter “Gaia” and classicist husband Thomas Bunker ‘Bon Coeur’ Hunt. When I first began my journey, it never occurred to me that “no matter where I went, there I’d be” so after 15 long years of globe trotting and coming to be known as one of Ric’s prodigal offspring, I have been given this opportunity to speak up and set the record straight. So, if coming to terms with my birth right means subjecting all you nice people to all the talent I can muster, then so be it.
emasten@whschool.org |
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TO MY DAD
I have spent my life among
weavers of words
spinning their colorful lines
of poetry
on the great loom of life
looking back to see what they have spun
and to explore the patterns they made along the way
for an unexamined life is not worth weaving
or perhaps
an unlived life is not worth examining
so let the poets weave
and I will just strive to live
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What I would write about (Ellen) if I were someone else:
>>>>I am delighted to have this opportunity to introduce Ellen Min Masten to you. My first contact with Ellen was in 1958. Ellen has been a lover of adventure, ideas and learning all her life. As a youngster, Ellen was swept into the early experiments of Summerhill in a one-room schoolhouse in mid-coast California. During her developmental years, she was destined to separate colored paper in the backroom closet or listen jealously to her older siblings and neighbors eagerly read from their open journals. Ellen was not satisfied with her utter lack of first language skills and soon began to show signs of discontent, truancy and unruly behavior the most noticeable. Unfortunately for her, no one seemed to pick up the notion that Ellen just wanted to learn with a vengeance. The learning specialist pulled Ellen aside for speech therapy with sock snakes spitting SS at her but failed to see how embarrassed Ellen was not to be able to read as well as her peers. Nothing seemed to work. Therefore, after every attempt she could think of to draw attention to her utter ignorance, Ellen decided to take her education into her own hands. With incredible perseverance and dedication to learning, even though she was reading way under her grade level, she applied to a boarding school in New Hampshire that served kids with special learning differences and needs and was admitted. It quickly became apparent that Ellen didn’t have any special learning differences; she just didn’t know how to read. Ellen had missed all the fundamental learning instruction from the first to third grade. She had tremendous gaps in her education that no one had ever taken the time to help fill. Once Ellen was taught, she turned out to be an insatiable learner.
>>>>Ellen currently teaches Spanish and ESL at Wardlaw-Hartridge, a K-12 private school in New Jersey. In addition, she is the World Language Department Chair and Director of the English as a Second Language program. Ellen, nicknamed Sra. Elena by her students, has been with Wardlaw-Hartridge since 1998. Ellen, a BA graduate of UC Davis in Spanish and a MA graduate of the Monterey Institute of International Studies in TESOL, has lived and traveled in many places in and outside the United States. Her love and devotion to languages has enriched her professional and personal life in numerous ways. Ellen has successfully established a sister school relationship with the Altair International School in Madrid, Spain to enable her students the opportunity to use Spanish in their daily lives. In addition, she has developed an innovative Spanish curriculum for the Lower School Spanish program; she dubbed "Puentes" that has been successfully implemented at Wardlaw-Hartridge School. Ellen continues to seek new and innovative ways to teach foreign and second languages and presently is piloting a textless Spanish program she designed to maximize the use of laptops and technology in world language classrooms.
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Link to Tom & Ellen's June WEDDING
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