Are you a teacher?
I'm often asked this.
When I go into schools, here in the UK or abroad or online, I’m often asked by teachers and librarians who invite me if I had trained as a primary school teacher.
And my answer is Nope! I just love interacting with children and showing how to do things.
But the real answer is a bit more complicated than that. I was always drawn to teaching even as a kid. My mum reminded me that I asked for a blackboard and chalk for my 6th birthday and I once sat them all down and took a class.
I started tutoring at home when I was 11 or 12 - to local kids - helping them catch up at school and then I taught Hindi - another language in India that was trying to take root in the South. I taught for over 7 years. Then after finishing university, my first job was teaching computer science to 16+ to adults.
I was keen to take on that first job as a trainer and I realised I had found my calling. I was so good at it, that I had a huge following in the student body and the job by itself gave me so much joy - both in the teaching, but also in the management side of things. I realised I had a very valuable skillset that was untapped during my school years.
Then I moved on, went into corporate work and started writing in my free time. At my fancy job, I was a mentor and a team leader to dozens of employees, in particular young people and women, and always got the compliment - “You’re inspiring!” Perhaps because I kept pushing people to gain more skills, move roles to expand their profile even if that meant I would lose a team member. I still do that - with strangers and acquaintances.
As a children’s author, I love going into schools to work with young children and helping them write a story. If I had wanted I could have stayed in my day job and written on the side for another 20 years. But I wanted to be in classrooms, do school visits, tell stories. So I quit my high-paying day job to be a children’s author of colour!
I’m in my element in a classroom, giving the children the support to expand their imagination and tell stories that only they can tell. I’m so totally at home with 3-12 year olds and can chat with them about any topic they want, find ways to include whatever their interests are, into the story they want to create.
The way I can hold a 500-strong group of children to attention, interact in a way that it doesn’t descend into chaos, make them laugh, make them put their hand up and ask a question - that is the skill I’m very proud of and never had to learn specifically. I trained as an oral storyteller - but the interaction, the back and forth, the jokes that makes an assembly hall roar with laughter - those I think I was born with and was never noted as a thing when I was growing up. I was the awkward one in family gatherings, in classrooms and among friendship circles.
Once after I finished a session for 9-10 year-olds in a hall packed with about 5 schools worth of kids, one boy came up to me and asked, “Are you a stand-up comedian?” First I was impressed that he knew what a stand-up was! Second I was floating because he found the talk funny. Year 5 kids are hard to please! And they get harder and harder to please as they grow older.
For the last 3-4 years I’ve been teaching newly published writers how to do school visits through Book Trust Represents, an initiative that provides support to writers of under-represented backgrounds to gain a foothold in the industry. They might run it again this year. So please register at the Book Trust Represents website to receive their news.
Back to grown-ups, over the years, I’ve taught writing and publishing to a number of small groups - especially in the children’s book world - from online virtual sessions to teaching a module at City Uni, it always gives me joy to teach. I get regular requests for people who want to be mentored or their manuscript checked out and I’ve been holding those requests back because time was at a premium the last three years. (Want to know why? Check this out.)
Now I’ve come up for air from the completion of production of the TV show, and Ballet Besties, a series I was writing with Yasmine Naghdi (illustrated by Paula Franco), is in final stages of production, I have time to honour those requests I’ve long pushed back.
This is the reason I opened up Picture Book Circle - to provide not just my feedback but also a workshop with peers for emerging and beginning picture book writers. This is my happy place - writing picture books.
The plan is to extend it to a Chapter Book Circle as well - I’ve created quite a few chapter books’ series and that’s another area of expertise I’d like to share with other writers.
Other than this, if time permits and life doesn’t get in the way, I’d like to revive one of my favourite courses to teach - Culturally Writing. This is particularly useful for people from under-represented backgrounds whose stories haven’t been told enough and want to write stories that draw upon their culture in direct and tangential ways.
For me teaching is showing someone how I do it, so they too can see their stories in print, feel happy about the story they are working on and perhaps even make one of their dreams come true. When I see a story that has potential, I get very excited. I can see the diamond embedded in the rock and I can’t wait to show the writer how to chisel and chip away to get that diamond shining.
Most often my enthusiasm for another writer’s work will hopefully provide enough fuel for their fire to finish the story and get a sense of achievement, and the confidence to keep going. And my true desire is for those who are climbing the same mountain, not to trip and fall at the same craggy rock as I did and still do.
I can’t promise you that there is a secret recipe to success and I somehow have it. But I can share what worked for me and what didn’t work, what I hear from the industry and the abundant know-how of how this industry works. I want to share my good practices and keep you away from my bad ones!
So the answer to the question Are you a teacher? Yes I am! But not in the conventional sense of the word - I don’t have a degree in teaching, but I believe in opening up doors, holding someone’s hand and showing them the opportunities their talent can summon!
If you’re looking for a picture book or chapter book workshop and coaching, find out more here or register directly here.