Chapter 17: Finding Myself With Teen Writers

Am I really willing to devote a substantial part of my research and writing time to plan and teach a summer course for teen writers? I hesitated before checking the box next to “Yes” on the invitation to teach in the Teen Writers Institute and pressing “send” in my email. It was February, and we were having a very cold winter in the northeast. I looked out on the frozen tundra of the university quad outside my office window and wondered if I had made the right decision. My almost 20-year career as a teacher educator in a mid-sized public university appeared to be in the doldrums. I had been at the associate professor level for more than a decade and knew that I would not be promoted to full professor unless I became more productive as a researcher and writer. But, productivity was a problem. The past few years I had been living in a strange kind of fun house, where my professional selfimage maniacally shifted from one grotesque and wildly incompetent image to the next. It was as if I had stepped out of a Picasso painting, my face cracked down the middle with one eye beaming from my forehead while the other stared blankly ahead.