HOW I BECAME A TEACHING AUTHOR

posted by April Halprin Wayland

I was wearing high heels and business suits, working in downtown Los Angeles in a well-paid job…and I was miserable. My life changed forever when I signed up for a class through the UCLA Extension’s Writer’s Program.

How can I describe how I felt when I began taking that class? I felt as if the sun were shining through me like it shines through these leaves on our persimmon tree:
I became addicted to writing classes. Each of my teachers gave me a part of herself. I studied with brilliant teachers: Ruth Lercher Bornstein, Susan Goldman Rubin, Sonia Levitin, Barbara Abercrombie and many more. But the teacher who really changed my life was poet Myra Cohn Livingston. I was her student for over ten years.

Myra gave me the discipline of poetry. She gave me the power of observation. She taught me that in poetry, less is more.

One of my cherished memories was when she read poetry to us for long stretches of time. We’d lean back, listen, luxuriate in each word.

http://daddyo.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/raptattention.jpg

Myra taught me to read every poem aloud twice: first to hear it, then to feel it.

While I studied with Myra, my first two picture books were published.

TO RABBITTOWN, illustrated by Robin Spowart, is a free-verse story poem

THE NIGHT HORSE, illustrated by Vera Rosenberry.
This book was based on an assignment in Myra’s class
to write a story in Shakespeare’s
iambic pentameter couplets.

It was as if I had been given a magic carpet--I became a visiting author, teaching poetry workshops across America and Europe.

Then UCLA Extension invited me to become an instructor. Me? What did I know? And besides, my life was too full. I had said "yes" to too many requests; I was learning to say "no."

Here was a perfect test! "So," I told my husband later, feeling quite proud of myself, "I recommended another author." My husband was astounded. “You did what?”

His reaction made me wonder: Oops. Did I just goof? And what makes a good teacher? Do you have to be the world's expert on a topic to teach?

I thought about all the wonderful teachers I’d had and all they’d given me. They gave me hundreds of resources. They showed me how to write…and rewrite and rewrite. They taught me how to submit manuscripts, how to pull myself up after rejection, and how to navigate the maze of publication.

Maybe I didn’t know much…but I could offer what I had been given.

Meanwhile, my next picture book came out. IT'S NOT MY TURN TO LOOK FOR GRANDMA!,
illustrated by The New Yorker cartoonist,
George Booth, includes a song which I wrote
using all I had learned from Myra.

Myra encouraged me to gather my poems for teens into a book. She helped me to select and arrange them.

Take heart! GIRL COMING IN FOR A LANDING--
A Novel in Poems, illustrated by Elaine Clayton,
took ten years to sell.

When UCLA Extension’s Writer’s Program called a few years later and asked me again if I wanted to teach a class, I took a deep breath and said, “Yes.”

And although I had taught workshops in grades K – 12 for years, the idea of teaching people my own height terrified me. I trembled for months as I prepared for that first class.My mantra—which helped—was: I am a snowflake. When they are in my class, they will learn my snowflakeness. When they take another class, they will learn that teacher’s snowflakeness.I practiced being a snowflake by teaching teens at my home. The most important thing I learned was not to throw every single solitary thing I’d ever learned at them (those poor overwhelmed kids!). John Holt wrote, “The biggest enemy to learning is the talking teacher.” I learned that in teaching, as in poetry, less is more.

I survived that first UCLA Extension class! The next time would be as easy as rolling down a hill, right? Wrong. The second year I was equally frightened. When I asked storyteller/teacher Katy Rydell why I was still scared, she said, “Oh, Honey—the fear doesn’t go away until you’ve taught the class for at least four years.”

My next picture book is NEW YEAR AT THE PIER--A Rosh Hashanah Story, illustrated by Stéphane Jorisch , who won the Canadian equivalent of the Caldicott Medal for Illustration twice! The illustrations are gorgeous.
It comes out June 2009.

So, it's been a process. I've become a TEACHING AUTHOR through the students I've worked with from kindergarten to AARP, through my colleagues, through my own teachers.

I’ve taught in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program for ten years now and this year
I. Finally. Understand:

Teaching is generosity.

I feel incredibly lucky to be part of TEACHING AUTHORS, and look forward to this great adventure in giving...and learning from you.