Last year, I finished a memoir about my eight-year career as a science teacher to teen moms, called Subject to Change. My story emphasizes the human capacity for and willingness to change when unexpected things happen. Sometimes we choose change, too. When I started this Substack newsletter last year, it seemed only natural that I also name it “Subject to Change”.
Choosing to teach secondary science at age 55 after several decades as a medical laboratory scientist and freelance writer and editor was radical. Sometimes, I’m still surprised I chose a third vocation that was so out of character for me, the definitive introvert. Because I was a recent empty nester, though, this change seemed like an adventure.
I’d had positive experiences in the classroom and loved learning. It seemed the ideal place to contribute something positive to the world at a time when I felt I’d accumulated a few talents and a little wisdom to contribute. I had no idea that the first job I’d be offered was at the same school where I’d been a volunteer mentor several years before. Coincidence? I’ve never thought so.
The change proved even more dramatic than I expected. It was jarring to be confronted with often grouchy, sleep-deprived teenage girls, who were pregnant or parenting and undergoing their own shocked reality. With only a couple of exceptions, none of my students planned to be pregnant. They didn’t choose change. It chose them.
An unexpected result of my choice was the recognition—not all at once, but over time—that my students would change me. The memoir focuses on my metamorphosis from a middle-aged (please allow me my delusions on this point) freelance writer with meager prospects to a public school teacher. As such, I had the opportunity to instruct, advise, console, provoke, and celebrate hundreds of young moms. All with paid health insurance and monthly direct deposit. Win-win!
Writing about my journey was both painful and joyful, in that it helped me recognize where I’d failed my students and where I ultimately learned to be a teacher who sometimes succeeded in teaching what she set out to teach—and sometimes accidentally taught something more important. Unlike my first memoir, Mother of My Invention, this one includes humor, most of it directed at me, and rightly so.
I hired one editor for developmental/content editing, and another for copy editing and proofreading. The manuscript was ready for publication, in my opinion. However, the agents and publishers to whom I sent a query, synopsis, and/or sample chapters disagreed. It was frustrating and deflating. Why didn’t they recognize the brilliant prose? The heartwarming themes?
After about six months of sending out little pieces of my heart and hoping it would make someone feel good, I decided to reevaluate. As a last ditch effort, I posted my dilemma on a Facebook group I belong to. Should I keep submitting? Self-publish? Revise some more? How much more agent and publisher abuse could I accept?
Out of the blue, a couple of days later, a commissioning editor for Lived Places Publishing messaged me through my website email address, no doubt a result of my whiny Facebook post. She thought they might be interested. We emailed. We chatted online. I submitted a proposal and the manuscript. At the end of September, they offered me a contract.
This book deal challenged all my expectations about what the book would become. LPP is an academic publisher that produces course readings for university students about lived experience. My book was a memoir describing, among other things: failed labs, grumpy student interactions, unexpected successes, and roller-coaster emotions (my students’ and their teacher’s).
LPP books include Learning Objectives, Discussion Questions, Reference Lists, and Indexes, all of which I would need to add. I’d also have to reduce the size of the manuscript and adjust the focus slightly. It wasn’t at all what I’d planned on, but I was intrigued.
As it turns out, I can do academic writing. My degree in journalism, my years as a newsletter editor, and my later-life practice in writing classroom lesson plans in four science subjects and college English courses were not wasted after all.
Once I changed my vision for the book, I enjoyed the rewriting process and the excellent professional support the publisher’s team offered. In fact, I liked it so much that I submitted another proposal to LPP and have a contract for a second book with them interviewing family members who have loved ones with mental health conditions.
The best news? My book, What Teaching Teen Moms Taught Me, was released this week, less than six months after I signed the contract. How cool is that? And all because I grumbled on Facebook about my lousy luck with publishers and took a chance on changing direction.
Check it out: https://livedplacespublishing.com/book/isbn/9781917566001
Janice Airhart 