Title: My Homecoming Dance: Reflections on Teaching in Wisconsin, by Susan Leamy-Kies
Genre: Memoir
Date Published: 2024; Wisconsin Writers Association Press.
Reviewed by: Doris Green
A few years beyond high school, memories of classes and sports, friends and teachers may cloud in your rear-view mirror. Parenthood, fraught careers, and mid-life crises may make high school seem distant if not irrelevant. Sue Leamy Kies clears away the fog and sets the record straight with her memoir, My Homecoming Dance: Reflections on Teaching in Wisconsin. When Kies returns to her Platteville High School alma mater to teach English, she confronts old truths about teaching and learning, as well as the current realities of bomb threats, budget cuts, cultural diversity, and technology hits and misses.
Like the first day of a new school year, the book opens with the promise of an adventure-filled journey. Each chapter begins with an apt quote spearing to its heart. Chapter 1 “Riding the School Cyle” begins with a quote from William Butler Yeats: “Life is a journey up a spiral staircase….” At the start of Chapter 18, “Technobesity,” Kies quotes Henry David Thoreau, “We don’t ride the railroad. The railroad rides upon us.” Kies sprinkles Thoreau’s quotes in other places, too, along with both serious and humorous gems from mentors, colleagues, and students.
Humor rises among more serious reflections like the hills and valleys of Kies’ Southwest Wisconsin. Metaphors spring to delight in equal measure, as when Kies considers the homecoming tradition of decorating neighboring homes with toilet paper: Prior to the big event, “students stock-piled their stash little by little…. Soon, every trunk in the PHS parking lot was as stuffed as a teddy bear’s belly. On the plus side, this provided an added safety feature in the event of any rear-end collisions.”
Kies confronts the valleys of 21st-century education head-on. Despite the frustrations of Wisconsin’s Act 10, the incomprehensibility of book banning, active shooter drills, and, even more unfortunately, suicides, Kies’ optimism prevails. Her own love of learning and care for her students form the solid structure on which this memoir stands. Contemplating retirement in Chapter 21, Kies quotes Winnie the Pooh, “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
Parents will want to read My Homecoming Dance to better recognize what goes on behind classroom doors. Voters struggling to understand their school district’s next referendum will find facts and examples to aid their decision-making. Students will find a broader perspective to their school days. High school education has evolved, and My Homecoming Dance enables readers to experience change through Kies’ wise eyes.
Reviewer Doris Green authored Elsie’s Story: Chasing a Family Mystery and Wisconsin Underground: A Guide to Caves, Mines, and Tunnels. Her newest title is Minnesota Underground: A Guide to Caves & Karst, Mines & Tunnels, co-authored with Greg Brick. Contact http://henschelhausbooks.com, Amazon, or your local bookstore.
