My Writing Life Is Going in Circles by Susan Van Kirk

 

Next week, my “new” version of Mr. Vonnegut and Me (And Other Incredible Tales from a Teaching Life) will appear in ebook with the paperback available a few weeks later. I emphasize “new” because this is actually the second edition of my first attempt to write a book. The memoir consists of fifteen stories of students who came into my life over a forty-four-year career in high school and college teaching, and I published it first in 2010.

 Why would I do that, you ask? Rewrite a book I wrote sixteen years ago? I have reasons.

 

First, the world has changed considerably in sixteen years even though the stories in my book remain the same. The introduction is dated because I referred to the No Child Left Behind law, which wreaked havoc on public schools, forcing them to spend time and money on days of national testing. It rested on the idea that a number could show if a student were learning, a concept loved by politicians who had no idea of what learning looked like. Since I referred to the NCLB law in my 2010 foreword, I figured I should get rid of it. The new foreword is more personal because I’m now looking back at a career beginning in 1968 from the perspective of a seventy-nine-year-old.

 

Second, in sixteen years I’ve learned so much about writing. I used my time well to re-edit the stories in the book. My whole writing style is different now after publishing an additional ten books.

 

However, the content of the stories remains the same. Those students taught me how to teach and showed me who I was, what I valued, and how I used my own moral compass to interact with 5,000-6,000 students over those forty-four years. Some stories seem fictional: a student who sneezed a hundred times when she had to give a speech, a drug overdose in my classroom, or playing electric guitar in a fraternity rock band concert when I was sixty-one. [Now THAT was a learning experience!] In 1980, the cash-strapped district tore the building down around us while we taught, planning to renovate it after the tearing-down phase. There were no asbestos laws yet. That story alone is astounding as we tried to hold classes while jackhammers were blasting and an entire bay of lights in my room crashed to the floor between rows of student desks. Then there was the book challenge in my class to a Kurt Vonnegut book, causing the entire town to line up on opposing sides over censorship and resulting in a wonderful letter to me from Mr. Vonnegut himself. I can’t begin to explain how incredible these stories are, but I assure you they all happened.

 

Finally, the world as we know it is now going through a period of time where people have forgotten the value of empathy, and they appear to have lost any ability to have common sense discussions. As I mention in my foreword: “So many of these stories aren’t written only for or about teaching. They’re stories of the human condition and of the empathy and humanity you find along the decades of your life.” Maybe it’s time to remind people of that lost world.

 

Are there lessons you’ve learned through experience that serve you well today?

Susan Van Kirk is the author of ten mysteries, including her Endurance Mysteries and Art Center Mysteries. You can find her on Instagram or Facebook, and her website is susanvankirk.com