When Linda Miller was in third grade, she was introduced to poetry. The most interesting books were written in simple rhyme schemes. That’s when Linda started writing poems for her parents for every birthday and Mother’s/Father’s day.
In school, English was always her favorite subject. She loved reading, writing and yes, grammar! She remembers a teacher instructing the class “Write what you know.” And that’s exactly what happened. She wrote stories about her four siblings, friends, parents, pets and even their home.
Linda didn’t go to college until her children were teenagers, taking night classes at a community college, earning an Associate’s degree. This took four years, as she was a full-time secretary. She knew she wanted to teach high school English and started working on her Bachelor’s degree at Towson University. It took her four more years to accomplish this goal.
Her first job was teaching at Good Shepherd Center, a live-in treatment center for emotionally disturbed teenage girls. She loved this job, and went on to earn a Master’s degree in Special Education. Later, she taught at Bais Yaakov, an all-girls Jewish high school.
Teaching writing was her favorite. Whenever she gave a writing assignment, she did every exercise her girls did in order to demonstrate techniques and ways to enhance stories. She says that as they learned, so did she.
Linda is now retired but continues to write poems, stories, anecdotes and memoirs. She lives with her husband of 30 years, has children and grandchildren galore. Some of them, she reports with pleasure, even love to write.