Awesome Dad Gambles on his Daughter’s Literacy:
Gerri Dobbins, Community College Instructor
By Amber Jones
Society has emphasized the importance of reading to children
from a young age for many years. Gerri Dobbins’s father
had no idea the benefits he could reap from this seemingly
trivial childhood tradition. Gerri Dobbins giggles as she
remembers her father betting that his daughter could actually
read an entire story at a very young age. She recited the
story perfectly and her father made $10! The joke: Her mother
had read to her so frequently that she had memorized the books.
The moral: Never miss the opportunity to wager on a child’s
intellect.
Education
Therefore, it would not be strange to expect this bright
child to grow up and pursue an education in Literature. Graduating
in 1986 with her undergraduate degree from Western Carolina
University, she pursued a master's degree there as well, focusing
on composition. Dobbins had been a non-traditional student
and had found that working in a medical office didn't satisfy
her passion for reading and writing. A fellow literature major
gave her this advice:“Sometimes you have to do things
for yourself.”
Dobbins can remember the instant she knew she wanted to be
a teacher. “I was tutoring a student in the writing
center, regarding direct objects versus indirect objects,"
she recounts. "He finally grasped the concept! He was
so grateful, and the feeling was overwhelming!” She
pursued teaching and actually taught at WCU.
A great groundwork
When pursuing doctoral work at University of North Carolina
at Greensboro, Dobbins felt more prepared than many of her
peers because of the knowledge she gained in Cullowhee. She
credits Dr. Jim Addison and Dr. Elizabeth Addison with modeling
great teaching technique. She established long-term relationships
with professors and had her mind “reshaped” to
such an extent that she developed “individuality.”
Dobbins's advice to other students and literature majors
at Western Carolina University: “Follow your heart,
do what you love, and the money will come later.” Her
modest home or limited finances never curtail Gerri Dobbins’s
happiness or her love for literature. She claims she was blessed
with parents who valued learning and instilled this value
in her at a very young age. She remembers her father answering
many of her questions with the advice, “Look it up.”
Teaching
Dobbins loves her job teaching at a community college in
the Piedmont region. She gets to relive her childhood by playing
school all day, every day. “Being so satisfied in your
career and your life is rare,” says Dobbins, “but
some things are sobering, like the sheer numbers of students
I teach and the papers I must grade.”
An instructor's job, Dobbins feels, is to make her students
competitive in the job market. As industrial and labor positions
are shipped overseas, reading, writing, communication and
listening skills become even more essential in today’s
labor market. Education empowers and liberates candidates
when jobs are scarce. Gerri Dobbins is doing her part to provide
these skills, in spite of the fact that she rarely encounters
a student who truly loves reading and writing.
Dobbins provides opportunities for students to incorporate
writing and analysis on their own turf with people in their
own world. She describes an assignment in which a student
profiles a tattoo parlor. Dobbins says, “Teaching students
to enjoy writing is more important than teaching them to memorize
techniques they'll never use again.” She enjoys researching
into the different ways brain connections are established,
and she uses her research to better enable the diverse community
college population to grasp difficult concepts.
Dobbins appreciates her education at Western and chose it
over other more prestigious schools like Chapel Hill because
she loves the mountains and the hiking but especially because
of the one-on- one interaction WCU offers.
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