Oh Kathy Harris! Your love of literture was contagious! Circa 1986, and there I sat in your American Literature class in rural Ohio. Completely turned off by school and being a willing participant in a self-fulfilling prophesy about where I would go academically, I thought your zeal over Whitman and Melville was insane. I admired you so much because you taught with such PASSION and you brought their stories alive for us. It endeared me to those writers as though I had known them personally. I took that same interest into a college classroom at the ripe age of 32 and read Greek lit for the first time in my life, Shakespeare, too. And you were with me as I turned the pages of the Orestia and fell in love with Beatrice’s defiance in the face of unrequired love. I have carried on your tradition in my own urban classroom where kids who would be less than inclined to care about literature sit and absorb what I offer them. You never spoke of grades or scores, you stressed our connection ot the characters and devloped an insight to where I could feel their emotions and identify with them. You taught with love. So do I.