Category: input update (Page 3 of 4)

Reading: Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis

Reading: Atomic Habits by James Clear (This one was a Christmas present.)

Reading: The Golem and Jinni by Helene Wecker

Listening to: Alice Coltrane, Reflection on Creation and Space (A Five Year View)

Listening to: Brian Eno, Thursday Afternoon

Drinking: Diet Pepsi (and too much caffeine)

Thinking about: My dream of working from home.

Today gave me a little foretaste of it. My husband watched the kids from about 11:30 to 4:00, with an hour-long lunch break in between (where I made the boys their sandwiches and cut up fruit), and I spent those three-and-a-half hours editing, listening to ambient music by Brian Eno, and drinking tea. I never felt overwhelmed by my work or unqualified or anxious or anything. I knew what to do, I knew I was good at what I was doing, and I knew that I could solve problems if I needed to. I was enjoying my work.

It was a much better feeling than the one I have when I’m teaching. When I’m teaching, I’m always second-guessing myself. I’m constantly anxious that I’m not doing a good job. I have a wicked case of imposter syndrome with teaching, and that leads to tons of stress and sadness. In theory, I *like* being a teacher. I like sharing my ideas about the world, about literature, writing, art, rhetoric. I like helping students discover their own ideas about these things. I like mentoring others, especially in their writing. But in actual practice, I find teaching — in schools, in the way we’ve structured secondary education — to be burdensome. I feel like it’s not the best environment for my talents. Managing and instructing lots of students all at the same time is an ill fit for me. I’m much better as a one-on-one teacher, or someone who works with small groups.

That’s why editing feels so natural and enlivening. It’s a lot like teaching — but it’s one-on-one, and it gives me space to really use my knowledge of language, grammar, and craft in a way that’s useful. I’m not a master of the writing craft (far from it!), but I have something to offer other writers, not least of which is my attention to detail. It’s always nice to have another pair of eyes catch typos, grammatical errors, and inconsistencies. I don’t feel like an imposter when I’m editing someone’s manuscript.

But with classroom teaching, I can’t spend my time just sharing my knowledge or mentoring students to improve their writing. Oh no. There’s the curriculum and the units and the lesson plans and the standards and all the stuff that has to be covered or else the students won’t do well on the SAT or AP exam or whatever. I’m much more of a “teaching is an art not a science” kinda person, but most secondary and elementary school administrators these days are convinced “teaching is a science,” and if we just have enough data and enough standards and benchmarks and evidence of growth, then we’re doing alright and kids are learning.

But this approach doesn’t gel with my instincts and personality as a teacher. I’m not particularly interested in benchmarks or even a curriculum. I’m interested in my students and their needs, and I know what knowledge and skills I can share with them, but for education to really happen, I need to be flexible and meet my students where they are, not where the curriculum says they need to be. I once told a colleague that my approach to teaching shares a lot in common with jazz. It’s improvisational. There’s a starting melody, a core theme, but around that theme, we might go off in various and digressive directions. I don’t like being wedded to “learning goals” or whatever because that doesn’t account for “X-quantities.”

Anyway, this is my long-winded way of saying that being an editor feels more like being an “educator” than my current job as a teacher does. Most likely, my failures as a classroom teacher are my own fault, but whatever the reasons may be, I know that I’m starting to feel much more comfortable in the editor’s chair. I liked working from home today. I liked reading a manuscript and writing down my notes and suggestions. I liked thinking of ways to help the writer’s prose sound clearer, more vivid, punchier. And I liked being able to do it all from home.