Jen Stratton: Word Warrior

I wish Jen Stratton and I had desks in the same office.  While I had no way of knowing that the day Kate connected me with Jen, my life would change, every conversation I have with Jen makes me long to spend more time with her. In schools, so much happens between and among colleagues because of proximity and relationships. Friendships emerge in the spaces in between. I cover your study hall or recess duty because we share an office, and I know you are overwhelmed because your mother is ill or your little one didn’t sleep last night. You are the person who knows I crave dark chocolate and leaves a piece on my desk.  Work relationships sustain us; it is good to work alongside people who mirror our passion for teaching and for children. But my work with Jen is virtual; she is my mentor and I am her intern as I pursue my M.F.A. through Bay Path University. We are both married to men named Seth, who share our dreams for using our talents to better the world.

Jen inspires me and has offered me new ways of looking at the world though I am her intern and she my mentor, though she is a higher ed professor and I a ninth grade English teacher, though she is still in the thick of raising children, and my Junior son will, we expect, leave us next year. She is a prodigious researcher and finds solace in the natural world. I, too, can quickly go down a research rabbit hole and love the natural world, but suspect I wade and Jen dives. She is knowledgeable, smart, measured, but beware crossing her–beneath her outward calm, she is a warrior, armed with words.  We are different ages, different stages, but I feel as if I have found more than a kindred spirit; she has ignited in me a passion for representation, especially the representation of children and adults with physical disabilities. I feel like her humble acolyte, ready to join her in the quest she devises. 

In December, we jumped into our collaboration without knowing each other’s stories. So, recently, I asked her to take me back in time before she wrote Nick Springer On the Move.  Always generous and so thoughtful, she offered me her own backstoryGrowing up in Springfield as a first generation college student, Jen had an English professor at U Mass Amherst, who stepped in at a challenging time in her life, sharing books with her.  This kindness inspired her to pay it forward, and she decided on a career in education, assuming she would teach high school English.  Experiences working with younger children convinced her that she might make a greater impact teaching younger children.  After receiving a Master’s Degree at Wheelock College, she coordinated a volunteer read aloud program in the Boston Public Schools, ultimately becoming a third grade teacher and then, as she fell more and more in love with unlocking the mysteries of teaching reading to young children, she did what she said she would never do and taught a multi-age  Kindergarten-First Grade classroom.  Along the way, she acquired a second Master’s as a reading specialist.  

Jen narrates this portion of her life as if progress was linear, though we know any such summary leaves out as much as it includes. When her first son was born prematurely, Jen realized she could not go back to work full time; Nolan’s needs were acute. Understanding that she and her husband needed more family support, Jen and Seth moved back home to Western Massachusetts.  

“Suck, swallow, breathe,” she explained calmly.  That was the sequence Nolan needed to learn; he would forget to breathe while nursing.  Over and over again, Jen and a host of therapists taught him all he needed to learn to survive.  His diagnosis of apraxia, an invisible disability, required him to learn how to do everything.  His first language was sign language.  Jen, working part-time as a reading specialist, spent her life immersed in  the alphabet soup of interventions Nolan required: PT, OT, Speech. Nolan’s needs plunged Jen into the world of disability.  Apraxia feels particularly cruel to me.  A quick Google search explains, “Apraxia is a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to perform learned (familiar) movements on command, even though the command is understood and there is a willingness to perform the movement. Both the desire and the capacity to move are present but the person simply cannot execute the act.”(https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/apraxia/)

Daughter Caitlin arrived two years later, and by then, Jen had re-established her career and was working full-time as a professor at Springfield.   

Jen’s husband’s cousin, Nick Springer, was a paralympian, and Jen had a poster of him on her office door. Caitlin asked if she could take the poster into school for show and tell. Nolan and Caitlin both wanted to share Nick’s story with their classes, but when Jen wrote to Caitlin’s Kindergarten teacher to say Caitlin was bringing in the poster, the teacher objected, saying the poster of Nick would scare the children.

As Jen recounted this story, nine years later, her eyes flashed across the Zoom screen. I had an image of Athena prepared for battle.  She was angry.  When the principal phoned, in response to the teacher’s email, which Jen had forwarded, Jen said, “It’s not if Caitlin brings the poster, it’s when.  Do you want to talk about discrimination? Does the teacher understand her presumption that every child is a member of an able-bodied family?”  I wish I could have heard her–I suspect she was magnificent.  Unsurprisingly, the principal did not want to talk about discrimination, but did join Caitlin in the classroom the day she told Nick’s story. Both children ultimately shared the poster and Nick’s story.

As Jen apologized to Nick for the Kindergarten teacher’s ignorance, Nick soothed her, “It’s okay, Jen, it happens,” but Jen was mortified, devastated and embarrassed.  Jen thought, “I teach teachers. How could this happen? Why is it happening?” and in her search for answers, began to look for the representation of physical disabilities in children’s literature. She found very few. So, she knew she had to write a book about Nick, but to make a faster impact, she started a blog.   

While all that was going on, Jen and her husband brought another child into their family. They had been exploring international adoption, but the process was not proceeding smoothly.  One day, Jen got a phone call about a high-need child from China who needed to be adopted; he was  a congenital amputee missing an upper limb..  His birthday was May 9th, the same date as Nolan’s birthday..  

When Jen and her husband returned from a walk–Jen often resolves problems and finds inspiration in walking–they shared Ian’s story with Nolan and Caitlin. Caitlin said, “Oh, we’re his family. We need to be his family cuz we know he can do anything.” 

While they worked on bringing Ian home, Jen began researching how to write a children’s picture book. Once she had the manuscript, she had some editors look at it and went to writing conferences to pitch it.  One literary agent wanted the gory details of Nick’s fight against meningitis; Jen was repulsed by the agent’s fascination with the macabre; it felt exploitative to her. Nick’s decision not to use prosethes. Because the publishing world is very much dominated by able-bodied men, Jen wondered if trying to tell the story of a quad amputee to children was simply too iconoclastic.  She decided she would work only with a disabled illustrator and artist. Serendipitously, at a roller-blading party seven year old Ian was invited to early in his time in Springfield, a mom struck up a conversation with Jen and asked if she was familiar with Mouth and Foot Painting Artists. She shared a card with Jen, who thought, “This is perfect,” and reached out. In the staff at Mouth and Foot, Jen discovered people as passionate as she about telling Nick’s story.  Kate understood the importance of telling this story. Jim demanded it be printed in hardcover, so it would literally “stand up” and hold space on the shelf. Chris, the illustrator, told Jen to send him what she was thinking. He translated  Jen’s vision–demonstrated, she explained,  in clumsy stick figure drawings–and turned them into pictures.  Chris was as edgy and funny as Nick; the two of them spoke, and Jen loved that they shared a feisty determination, the opposite of any treacly, overly sweet stereotype of a person living with a physical disability.  

The publication of Nick Springer On the Move was slowed by the pandemic—it was supposed to be earlier, but Chris got sick. Then, the book was being printed in Canada and  Covid shut down the plant. Then, unexpectedly, Nick died.  They had planned to release the book in late summer of 2021 in time for the paralympic games, but they moved the date up to June 9th, Nick’s birthday.  Nick saw the digital copy and was so excited; they made a decision about the back cover. They were all thrilled. His passing has left a huge hole for Jen and for her family.

Yet, even in her grief, she wrote another picture book, this one about  Dr. Ludwig Guttman, Father to the Paralympic Games. Dr. Guttman fled the Nazis and settled in Stoke Mandeville, where he oversaw a unit of patients with spinal cord injuries. Expected to die, the patients arrived at the hospital in lidless coffins; they were fully casted and died of urinary infections.  Guttman ditched the coffins and the casts and had patients rotated every two hours. First, he brought in cobbler’s benches and jewelry stations for the patients to do things; then he introduced sports.  Jen wants children to know his story–like Nick, Dr. Guttman was full of grit and determination and a refusal to let life flatten him.  Jen was able to interview Guttman’s daughter; that recorded interview is now part of the National Heritage Paralympic Trust in Stoke-Mandeville.  She has sent the book out to agents, but has not yet heard back.

Early on in my internship, Jen and I connected with the Perkins School for the blind; I suspect, knowing her love of research, that another book will emerge from those conversations. Additionally. She is planning another picture book for young children with illustrations of parents and children with physical disabilities.  

As we concluded our conversation, I asked a few more questions. 

Like me, reads several books at a time. Right now, she’s in the midst of three: Overcoming Dyslexia by Dr. Sally Shaywitz and Hawking, a new graphic novel about Stephen Hawking.  She’s re-reading Pema Chodron’s  When Things Fall Apart, one of my own favorites. If she could wave a magic wand and have more time, she would want to be able to walk in the natural world and have time to read and wite; she describes being on a bridge in Boothbay, Maine, surrounded by family, laughing and talking, eating good food, watching the sunset, and ultimately looking up at the stars. 

We end our conversation thinking about what it means to spend time with those we love who are with us physically and with us in memory. I wish I had known Nick, but believe, more than ever, my job is to help Jen continue to share his story.  

At some point during our call,  I asked what her personal mission statement would be. She picked up a pen and deliberated for a moment: To live with intention and purpose. I think she does this–every single day.  She is a woman of conviction, an advocate, an ally, a warrior with words. And she is my mentor.  

Jen writes: On the day that Nick’s book arrived in the mail, Caitlin grabbed it, ran outside and started reading it under a tree. Ian followed and sat there listening to every word. I watched them both in awe, feeling Nick close, and knowing that his story was in the hands of the next generation.