QWF Writes

Tag: teacher

  • The Circle of Mentorship—By Shelagh Plunkett

    The Circle of Mentorship—By Shelagh Plunkett

    Linda Kay—author, journalist and teacher—died last October. In 2006 she was assigned to mentor me by the Quebec Writers’ Federation, and in the twelve years that followed became a great friend as well as remaining a generous-hearted and gracious advisor. In the months since she died, during the hundreds of times I’ve missed being able to email or call her, I’ve thought often about what I’ve lost without her in my life and what I learned from having her in it. Perhaps most importantly, Linda showed me how essential mentorship is for a writer.

    Linda Kay
    Linda Kay

    Linda’s achievements as a writer and teacher were impressive (including no less than a Pulitzer won as part of a team early in her career), but recording them here would leave nothing more than a superficial sketch that failed to convey who she was. Similarly, outlining the empty space that her death has opened in my life would leave a hollow impression of our friendship. I’m left wanting to convey one of the most important things I learned from Linda: that mentorship is essential for a writer.

    When I moved to Montreal, I joined the QWF to meet writers. I applied to the mentorship program and was introduced to Linda. The first time we met she brought the essay I’d submitted with my application—a short piece about growing up in Guyana, in South America. “Send this in to the CBC Literary contest,” she urged me.

    I’d written it in a flurry of frustration one afternoon. It was the sort of writing I wanted to do but was unlike anything I’d ever tried, because it was not the kind of piece my freelance clients were interested in publishing. I didn’t know if the piece was good or bad, but I’d had fun writing it. Linda was adamant, so I took her advice.

    She was right; the essay won the CBC Literary Award for creative non-fiction. Linda told me my life would change, and it did. With that award to reflect on and with her encouragement, I began to think I could write more than just simple news pieces, arts profiles, or lifestyle columns. I began to think I might have the chops to string a few words together that might have a deeper purpose, that might offer something more to a reader than a few minutes of entertainment. Linda suggested I approach publishers. “They’ll pay attention to you now,” she said. She was right. Penguin signed a contract with me and my memoir of adolescence overseas—born out of the essay I’d written—was published in 2013.

    In the years that followed, Linda continued to inspire me to take the work of writing seriously, because that’s what she did. She applied all her skill, insight, and effort to everything she did, from writing to teaching to friendship; to every assignment, be it a book or a short piece for Costco Connections. Ultimately, what we try to do as writers is communicate. Linda showed me that without giving one’s full passion, focus, and commitment, communication isn’t worth the effort.

    Linda didn’t tell me she was sick until quite close to her death, but in her last months we wrote often and our conversations continued to ramble around writing, family, new and old loves, life. She remained as she’d always been, even in our last correspondence, an email sent less than a week before her death from her hospital bed. Linda wrote that she’d passed on my name and the title of my book to a Guyanese intern she’d met, encouraging the woman to seek out my writing. Right to the end, Linda remained a supporter and mentor.

    It is not an exaggeration to say I would not be a published author, and would not be writing still, if not for Linda. And now, things have circled back for me: I’ve been hired by the QWF to fill the role for someone else that Linda did for me when we first met. As I key these words, I am embarking on three months of mentoring a promising writer in our community. Though I miss Linda immensely and often, I’ve not lost the gifts she was lavish in bestowing. I will turn to my memories of Linda now and into the future, knowing that by doing so I’ll be motivated to achieve much more than I imagine myself capable of. More significantly, her memory will inspire me to pass on to my mentee what Linda gave me as a mentor.

    ShelaghPlunkett_photocredit-NiamhMalcolmShelagh Plunkett is a past winner of the CBC Literary Prize for creative non-fiction. In 2013 her memoir, The Water Here is Never Blue, an extension of her winning essay, was published by Penguin Canada. It was shortlisted for both the QWF Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction and the QWF Concordia University First Book Prize. Shelagh now lives in Montreal, where she is at work on too many projects. Her past hometowns have included Georgetown, Guyana; Kupang, Timor; Vancouver, Victoria, and Toronto; Ricón-de-la-Victoria, Spain; and Salt Spring Island.

    Photo credits: Flickr (header banner), Courtesy of Emily Kay-Rivest (photo of Linda Kay), Niamh Malcolm (headshot of Shelagh Plunkett)

  • A Memoirist’s Dilemma: Telling the Truth Without Betrayal by Karen Zey

    A Memoirist’s Dilemma: Telling the Truth Without Betrayal by Karen Zey

    In another life, I worked in schools as a special education teacher and administrator. I gathered stories for thirty-five years, and as a writer, I wanted to recapture my classroom days so that readers would land in the scene and see a flicker of universal truth. But as a teacher with a longstanding commitment to confidentiality, sharing my insider’s view was sticky.

    I was a newcomer to memoir, and I faced the usual hurdles. I had an imperfect memory and was still developing my craft. But in addition to juggling voice, scene, structure and imagery, I wrestled with divulging personal attributes. Advice from the sages of creative non-fiction – don’t add or embellish, don’t deceive – was not particularly helpful here. The discussion about naming real people usually focuses on possible fall-out from family and friends. Writers of memoir are urged towards honesty and disclosure. Yet I had a moral and legal obligation to protect the privacy of my former students and their families. How do teachers (and nurses, psychologists and social workers) write about their working life while respecting professional obligations?

     

    “Writers of memoir are urged towards honesty and disclosure. Yet I had a moral and legal obligation to protect the privacy of my former students and their families.”

     

    In my first published story about a student, I was able to get the family’s permission to use their son’s name. “Lessons from my Favourite Student” recounted my experience teaching a child with Down syndrome. Mark, now in his forties, loved having his story appear in his community newspaper. His parents, both teachers, were thrilled that their son was the subject of a teacher’s fond memories.

    But as I dug deeper and began writing about vulnerable students, difficult parents or my floundering efforts as a young teacher, the dilemma of what to divulge and what to keep hidden soon emerged. Were pseudonyms enough? Was it okay to change physical features, like hair colour or age, to hide a child’s identity? Were fictitious locales and made-up school names sometimes necessary? I wanted to remain faithful to what happened, but I was walking a tightrope between revelation and secrecy.

    Altering names was an immediate decision. What did it matter if an eight-year-old student was called Matthew or Jake? As a story developed and I imagined someone – a parent, a colleague, a former student now an adult – reading what I’d written, I realized I had to avoid causing hurt. I had a responsibility to safeguard privacy. While presenting authentic details about people and what they said, I needed to keep my characters anonymous.

    If the child is in grade one rather than two, if she’s blonde not brunette, if the family has three kids, not four – do these tiny changes undermine the truth of what happened? No. Since I taught fewer than seven students a year in my Special Ed. classes, will naming the school make identities too obvious? Sometimes. If I write about the boy with autism who hated parachute games – the flapping cloth, the descent of the dark billowing shape – and confessed he threw out his sneakers to avoid gym class, should I modify parts of the scene? No. I don’t want to obscure any precious moments of insight or connection. To ensure confidentiality, should I use the disguise of a composite character? Never. This would dishonour the individuality of the people who came into my life.

    A few months ago, I had lunch with a former colleague who thought she recognized a troubled boy in one of my stories. “I presume he was one of ours,” said Kathy. She pushed me for details, but I just smiled. As she reached for her coffee, she added, ”Well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? We knew so many students like him. Too many. And you’ve captured what it was like for us.”

    For many years, a village of special children taught me how to be a better teacher and a better human being, and I’m deeply grateful. Now I’m a writer. I don’t change facts for the sake of art. I try to write the truth while avoiding betrayal. I hope no one can say for sure who “Michael,” “Jimmy” or “Tina” are, or where they went to school. They deserve privacy. But when I write about how our paths crossed, I hope my readers will recognize every one of their souls.

    Karen ZeyKaren Zey is a writer and full-time student of life who treasures her past career in special education. Her stories and essays have appeared in Artsforum Magazine, Gazette Vaudreuil-Soulanges, Hippocampus Magazine, Prick of the Spindle and The Globe and Mail. Karen lives in Pointe-Claire, Quebec, and is currently working on a school-based memoir.