Charles Burrall
Charles Burrall was raised in upstate New York and graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1976 with a B.A. in English. He lived eight years in Alaska where he worked as a commercial fishing deckhand and ship’s steward in the U.S. Merchant Marine. He is a retired high school English teacher who taught for twenty-five years at Seneca Valley High School in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Before entering his teaching career, he worked at a variety of jobs, including restaurants, construction crews, canneries, and fishing boats. He traveled widely in the United States, Mexico, Europe, and the Middle East before coming to Maryland, where he currently volunteers in the jail ministry of his church, preaching and conducting church services for the inmates at the Frederick County Detention Center.
Mr. Burrall is married and has six children.
From Mr.Burrall:
“My life saved my life.” Those are the words of Frank McCourt when he described what got him through thirty years of teaching public high school English in New York City. He used stories of his “miserable childhood” to gain the attention of his students, stories that kept him swinging, kept him in the ball game, kept him coming to work and surviving each day.
I did not have a miserable childhood. I grew up in a small town in upstate NewYork at the north end of Seneca Lake during a time when kids were always outside. In the summer we played baseball and rode our bicycles to the lake and lolled away long afternoons swimming and lying in the sun. (We didn’t have to worry about sunscreen back then.) In winter we went skiing and sledding and building snow forts to our hearts’ content and maybe get a cup of hot cocoa when we came inside. McCourt said, “. . . the happy childhood is hardly worth your while,” but I was glad to have one.
I was too young for the Vietnam War—just barely—and privileged to go to college, but there was something missing from my sheltered life: I didn’t know much. There had to be something more. And so I left all of it behind to find out. After twelve years of rubbing elbows with the other side of life, chasing the elusive dream of being a published writer, I found I was on the fast track to nowhere. But when I first stepped back into a public school classroom, I made a dramatic discovery: I had something to say, something they wanted to hear. “My life saved my life.”
Before entering his teaching career, he worked at a variety of jobs, including restaurants, construction crews, canneries, and fishing boats. He traveled widely in the United States, Mexico, Europe, and the Middle East before coming to Maryland, where he currently volunteers in the jail ministry of his church, preaching and conducting church services for the inmates at the Frederick County Detention Center.
Mr. Burrall is married and has six children.
From Mr.Burrall:
“My life saved my life.” Those are the words of Frank McCourt when he described what got him through thirty years of teaching public high school English in New York City. He used stories of his “miserable childhood” to gain the attention of his students, stories that kept him swinging, kept him in the ball game, kept him coming to work and surviving each day.I did not have a miserable childhood. I grew up in a small town in upstate NewYork at the north end of Seneca Lake during a time when kids were always outside. In the summer we played baseball and rode our bicycles to the lake and lolled away long afternoons swimming and lying in the sun. (We didn’t have to worry about sunscreen back then.) In winter we went skiing and sledding and building snow forts to our hearts’ content and maybe get a cup of hot cocoa when we came inside. McCourt said, “. . . the happy childhood is hardly worth your while,” but I was glad to have one.
I was too young for the Vietnam War—just barely—and privileged to go to college, but there was something missing from my sheltered life: I didn’t know much. There had to be something more. And so I left all of it behind to find out. After twelve years of rubbing elbows with the other side of life, chasing the elusive dream of being a published writer, I found I was on the fast track to nowhere. But when I first stepped back into a public school classroom, I made a dramatic discovery: I had something to say, something they wanted to hear. “My life saved my life.”
