Novel-- "Other People's Kids"
Aggie: A forty something woman who moves to West Sonoma County, CA, in the hopes of finding peace and fulfillment in rural California. She spends her work time caring for small children and her home time caring for goats,and worries that it is too late to find her perfect co-teacher-- in the classroom and in life.
Chelsea-- Her family is volitale, violent, and nuts, and far away on the San Francisco Peninsula. She is young, bright, and hungry-- one day she will work alongside George Lucas, and moving ten miles away from his house will get her there faster. But there's this very sweet, slightly older guy who adores her--- maybe a little too much...
Andy-- Once he gave his heart to the seminary, then he gave his heart to film, then he gave his heart to a perfect angel who stomped it flat. Now he is stagnating in a community TV job he can do in his sleep-- but a side project working with local teens, and a cute, ambitious film nerd are starting to poke his heart awake again.
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My project is a fictional novel, in part based on my experiences. In order to give myself more freedom in discussing them, I have created a fictional character (think The Nanny Diaries or The Help) who runs a fictional blog describing her various sub gigs, and I am completely relocating the setting to somewhere I have never, ever worked or lived before. Also, the stories will be told through composite characters and combined incidents-- basically, by doing a lot of lying, I hope to be able to tell some important truths.
In addition to being a substitute, our intrepid heroine volunteers at a rural community television station, and has a side project which involves teaching junior high aged youth digital film/ audio skills. There will be romance, local crime, and local politics. There will be stupid squabbles, occasional cussing, and children, teens and adults having messy, complicated lives. The working title is “Other People’s Kids”, to give respect to the kinds of connections formed by people who devote thier lives to serving other people’s children.
I reached the point in my career where due to various life/ job transitions, I have spent more time as a contracted preschool substitute than I spent in my longest held permanent job.
This really bothered me at first. Most of this is down to the fact that I have been very picky in my job search-- I want to find a career home in a school that allows me to be the best teacher I can possibly be, according to my knowledge of and beliefs about developmental child care, and my experiences as a contract sub have taught me that those schools are very rare. (Also, rarely hiring, as job satisfaction is high!)
In reviewing my career path, I became more positive about my experiences as a sub-- they have put me in a unique position to compare policies and procedures, to note things that consistently help make a good school and things that consistently don’t help. It has also given me a unique viewpoint regarding the changing policies in early childhood education, and how they actually affect the children in our communities. In particular, I am concerned by how various policies seem to impact the most vulnerable (poor, urban) populations, by implementing paperwork requirements that more and more to take talented teachers out of the space they can help children most-- in face to face interaction with them-- and into a place where their worth is determined by how much paperwork they fill out.
Currently, I am working a part time substitute schedule so as to leave room for a consistant writing schedule. I am asking the absolute MAX of what will give me the freedom to do what I want to do, but any amount will help move me along the road. And if by some miracle I wind up with more than I need, I pledge to donate the excess to one of those small, humble “second homes” that are doing amazing things with few people seeing.
