'Mr. Terupt' Shows What A Difference One Teacher Can Make
There was a year when I had a student, Ryan, who went home and shared the dollar word challenge with his father. I guess his father was a computer programming man, or certainly involved with computers, and sat down and did this thing with his computer one night. So, my student Ryan came back into school the next day with this piece of paper, double-sided, with all of the dollar words from the dictionary, listed in alphabetical order. He sort of entered the classroom waving this piece of paper back and forth. "Hey, Mr. Buyea, here's your dollar words!" And I saw that and [said] "Oh my gosh, Ryan! That's not what you were supposed to do for the assignment. Let me see that."
And so I took that piece of paper and I kept it. I kept it, and I had it in my writing folder. And as I was working on the story, whenever it felt like it was time for a dollar word, I would pull out that cheat-sheet that I ended up with thanks to Ryan and his father. I would scan that cheat-sheet, and sure enough, I would find the perfect word that worked. ... I had lots of fun with that part of the story.
On his most rewarding classroom project
Every project that Mr. Terupt tries is a project that I did at one point or another. ... [I had] my students visit a classroom that we had in our school — a classroom for children with special needs. Of all the things that I did with my teaching, that project was maybe the most rewarding. And so I was excited to have that as part of the story. ... I guess that's one message in the book, is to really try to take time and understand how much children in a classroom like that have to offer and how much love they give to the world and to the people that are a part of their life.
On how he became a writer
Read an excerpt of Because of Mr. Terupt