When I started teaching, my first year was pure survival. I certainly presented material so that students could learn but I didn’t really understand classrooms or the dynamics of the students in middle school. I can say looking back, that I did understand a certain amount about certain students but I could have done so much better. 

I came to understand that one person was much better at math than her scores showed. Her grades had been fairly low for years and she had totally lost confidence in her math abilities. I discovered that she had a couple of math facts wrong. For example, she did not know what 8×7 equalled and routinely put down the same wrong answer. And routinely what happened was, problems she knew how to solve came out with an incorrect answer but on an entirely random basis. She couldn’t figure out why one day she could do the problem but the next day she couldn’t. At the pre-algebra level, problems have lots of steps, and if the problem had 8×7 early on in a sequence, she would get the wrong answer while following the correct procedure. Unfortunately, I didn’t figure this out early enough to change her perception of her own ability, but I did have strong opinions after that, about partial credit for math problems. 

I discovered another child who constantly made careless mistakes — mistakes that she herself could easily fix if she took the time. That student never made the decision to straighten herself out. 

I ended with strong and contradictory opinions about partial credit in math. In the first case, enough partial credit and constant attention to the problem might have given Student #1 confidence. In the second case partial credit simply let Student #2 stay at a performance level she was perfectly happy with. She needed to fail before she would acknowledge that she needed to change. 

My second year of teaching I felt much more confident myself. I was able to manage the classroom better and work with the material more confidently and generally, improve my first year performance. I knew to watch out for individual problems even if I wasn’t always sure what to do about them.

My third year… Oh, dear.  

I’m not the only teacher who got to the third year thinking it would be the best year yet, and discovering, instead, that I was still a tremendous neophyte. My eyes seemed to open up to “reality.” Everything that I did needed to be improved. Discipline, grading, explanations, field trips, student interaction, parent discussions. The more I looked, the more I saw areas that needed massive improvement. 

This is how I feel as a writer. I’ve put out a couple of books. I’ve liked them, even knowing that they had faults. But the one I’m working on now is challenging me completely. I thought, foolishly, that I’d finish the writing last year. However, my heroine was unlikable, my cast is very large and unstable, and the original premise of the story was going to take two books to explain. Problem there!

Why should anyone read book one? They’ll be so disappointed!

As I’ve worked through the various issues with character and dialogue and pacing and structure, the actual incidents in the book have remained close to the same. In other words, I’ve added thoughts, but I haven’t subtracted action. This seems very similar to that first year teacher. What else is similar is that if I hadn’t published the first books I wouldn’t be trying to write this one. You can’t get to number 3 without working through numbers 1 & 2.

I find that hopeful.

I became a very good teacher.

Maybe I’ll become a very good writer as well.