I never wanted to be a teacher...but here I am, a teacher
It’s said: Necessity is the mother of invention. I happen to agree.
Growing up in my family, we weren’t encouraged to ask for money. In fact, I remember mom getting upset when we did. It started in day care.
My mother has a funny story of how she got the vouchers to enroll us. By the time she was 21, my mother had three kids, less than two years apart each–bro was born May 1972, my sister March 1974 and I came soon after in December of 75. She hadn’t yet been in this country five years. Trauma made my mother impatient, among other things, but I can’t imagine a twenty-one year old equipped to raise three kids. When I came, it only got worse for her. I was born sickly. The stories about mom’s carreras to the hospital are legend in our family: otra carrera con Vanessa…
I spent most of my first year in and out of the hospital. When I was finally well enough to go home, the doctors told mom she’d have to quit her job to care for me as I needed round the clock care. (There’s also the story of the brace they put on me from my lower back to my feet, to straighten my legs, which were splayed, each foot pointing the opposite direction, as a result of all the time I’d spent lying on my back in the NICU.) That’s when mom finally got on public assistance, and only for a few years. She’s sure to share this tidbit when she speaks of that time. When I was three, she went to a face to face appointment (pronounced: fay to fay. If you’re Latinx, you already know) at the welfare office. She says that when the case worker took a look at her, she asked her if she’d like to put us in day care.
My mother looks sad in all the pictures I’ve seen of her at that time. Her eyes are weary, like they’ve seen too much, and her expression is pained. I imagine her in the case workers office, hair a mess, eyes darting, on the verge of tears, her energy is heavy and frantic.
It was my brother and me who were driving our mother mad. We climbed to the top of cabinets to jump off onto piles of pillows. (That’s how Carlos got that gash on his forehead that required stitches.) We wrestled. We broke things. We were high energy and we were fearless, and that stressed our mother out. When I was only months out of the hospital and just putting on weight, I broke my arm playing one of these games with my brother. We were jumping on the babysitter’s bed, competing for who could jump the highest. I said I could touch the ceiling with my toes. I came crashing down, fracturing my left arm and shoulder. I was hospitalized for days. The doctors worried I’d never have full function of my arm. I still remember terrorizing the nurses, climbing out of the crib when no one was watching, and running off to venture the hospital.
Mom was right to need help. We were wild.
The day care fees were covered by the vouchers, but they didn’t cover the costs of trips during the summer months. They were never too much money. $2 to go to the beach. $3 to go to a museum. But mom was on a fixed income. I remember asking her. Pleading. I just wanted to ride the train with my friends. I wanted an adventure. She grew angry and she didn’t hide it. I got the point early on. Ask mom for money, and she’ll get pissed. Solution: don’t ask mom for money.
That meant when the Scholastic Book catalogs were handed out in grammar school, I read through them and circled the books I wanted. There were always many. I was an avid reader from an early age. But I never asked mom. I didn’t want to anger her.
I remember when the 5 cent refund for bottles and cans started in NYC in 1983. I remember because I jumped on the chance to make some money. The neighborhood kids teased me when they saw me walking up and down the block, emptying the Heineken bottles and Budweiser cans the men left when they played dominoes. They said it was dirty. “Bums do that. You a bum, Vanessa?” I felt the twinge of shame, but did it anyway. I bought a lot of candy with that money. And a few times, I bought myself some books and stickers from the Scholastic catalogs. That’s how I got the Amelia Bedilia series one year.
When I went away to boarding school, I started working right away. I was 13, so I wasn’t of age to get a “real” job, but I could baby sit, and that’s what I did. For a few months I took care of a third grader after school, until her mother came home from work. That ended terribly because I didn’t know how to care for children. I knew how to repeat the dysfunctional treatment I’d learned from my mother, and in hindsight, I can see why that mother flipped out and fired me when she heard I’d threatened her child with physical violence. I’d have done the same.
When I turned 14, I got a job at a nearby supermarket, Roche Brothers. Over the years, I held numerous jobs: an input clerk at an accountant firm, a scooper at an ice cream store. It was in high school that I stopped depending on my mother to buy me things. I bought my own supplies, coats for those harsh New England winters, toiletries, clothes. In college, I didn’t ask mom for help buying books or paying tuition. I did what I had to do. Poverty had made me industrious.
This industriousness has followed and served me throughout my life. When I was working in corporate America, making barely enough to pay rent and bills (NYC is so ridiculously expensive), I did side gigs: typing (thank goodness for that keyboarding class in high school), data entry, writing.
And when I had my daughter and became a single mom, and my daughter’s father didn’t help as much as he could (and the law required), I again did what I had to do.
Maybe that’s why when I quit my last full time job in 2010 and hurled myself into living my dream of teaching and writing full-time, I didn’t worry about making ends meet. Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of times I didn’t have enough money for rent. I got so many three day and eviction notices, threats from ConEd that my lights were going to be shut off. I defaulted on my college loans. I didn’t have cable for years. The thing is, I knew I was industrious. I knew I could go out and make money if I had to. And I always did.
I created Writing Our Lives out of necessity. There was no one in my community teaching creative nonfiction outside of academia. The need was there. I also needed to make some money, and I wanted to make it doing what I was good at and loved: writing and teaching. As the saying goes: necessity is the mother of invention.
For a long time, I didn’t want to teach. My mother was a para-professional, in essence a teacher’s assistant, for years. I spent so much time trying to not be like her, I resisted becoming an educator as a result, but once the teaching bug hit me, it was hard to ignore.
I started teaching in after school, summer and weekend programs that I was introduced to by my daughter’s father, who is also an educator. He got me the in, but my skills were mine. I was immediately recognized for my ability to engage the students and for sharing texts they could connect with. I once led a class of notoriously misbehaved fourth graders through an exercise where we wrote a story together as a group. An administrator overheard. She pulled me aside, said: You’re really good at this. I know teachers who’ve been teaching for years who can’t do what you just did. You should consider applying for Teach for America or one of those programs. I’d write you a recommendation.
I didn’t go that route because I didn’t want to teach through the Board of Ed. I’d learned how terrible the bureaucracy was during the brief time I was with my daughter’s father. How could I do it then?
The opportunity came to me. It was the fall of 2007. My first novel was out, and a writer I’d met reached out with an opportunity to facilitate a multi-week fiction writing class through an organization in El Barrio. I was working full-time, but barely making ends meet. The money offered for the class wasn’t much, but I took it anyway. Could I do this? Was I good enough? Did I have the skills?
I was immediately struck by how much I loved the work. I knew this was what I was meant to do, and I knew I had to somehow do it. It was after my first VONA in 2009 that I created the Writing Our Lives Workshop. I wasn’t widely published then. Truth is I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but I wasn’t afraid to fail. I wasn’t afraid to try new things. I just wanted to teach.
I heard people (let’s call them haters) talking smack about my audacity. Who the fuck did I think I was? I wasn’t even widely published. Who is she? How is she qualified? Maybe I wasn’t. I didn’t care. I’d obsessively studied craft. I’m largely self-taught because I didn’t want to put myself in more debt (college loans are predatory AF) and I couldn’t afford to go to grad school. I had to feed and clothe myself and my daughter. I had to pay all my bills. I was barely eking out a living working and with the pennies I got in child support. Going to grad school just wasn’t a possibility. So, I studied. I studied obsessively. And I attended classes and workshops, when I could.
Writing Our Lives has evolved so much since then. I know what the fuck I’m doing now. I have that Vanessa from back then to thank. She didn’t let the naysayers stop her. They were just parroting what they’d been taught. They too had been told we have to do this and do that before we can do something daring like what I did. I had to have an MFA, they said. I had to publish more. I had to get some big time writer to co-sign me and my work. I didn’t have none of that. I did it anyway. But that’s always been my way. Do it anyway. Que se joda lo que digan la gente. If you feel called to it, do it.
Like when I started collecting bottles and cans, back when I was seven years old.
I’ve since taught for numerous organizations and schools, including East Harlem Tutorial Program, Hunter College, Teachers & Writers Collaborative, GrubStreet (Boston’s writing center), Roots. Wounds. Words., among others. I was just hired to teach through Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop out of Denver. I’ve partnered with some of the most prestigious lit orgs and sites in the country to publish WOL alumni: Tin House, The Rumpus and NYU’s Latinx Project, and in 2019, I partnered with Longreads to publish Mother Wound stories. None of this would have happened if I’d listened to the haters. None of this would have happened if I’d let my own fear paralyze me, because let me be clear, I may have been audacious, but I was no less terrified. I did it anyway.
A student recently asked me: how do you come up with all these classes? How do you come up with these exercises?
She too is an educator, and struggles. She says it doesn’t come naturally to her. I’m not sure if I’d say it comes naturally for me. What I can say is that I have an intuitive sense for these kinds of things. I think about what I want, what I wanted when I was a young writer, what I did (and still do) in my obsessive study of craft, what exercises worked for me, those that I’ve learned at the various many classes and workshops I’ve attended. I think about what I’ve struggled with and I take it from there. I believe that we are supposed to share what we learn. So, when I struggled to write about grief, I studied how other writers have done it, what has been written about grief. I made a note of the books, essays, etc. I turned to when I was choking on my own grief. My Writing Grief class came out of that.
I’m currently reading Undrowned by Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs. In a recent interview, Dr. Gumbs shared that grief over the loss of her father led her to study marine mammals. I am fascinated by this approach. She’s inspired me to explore how and why grief led me to old growth forests, to the trees. I’m sure a new Writing Grief class and more will come out of this exploration.
It’s the same story for many one day and multi-day classes I’ve created and facilitated over the years. I listen. I feel. I do. And I learn as I go. I don’t always know what I’m doing or why I’m doing it, but I’m not afraid to go out looking for an answer. I’m not afraid to follow my curiosities and obsessions.
We all have them. What are yours? How can following them teach you, expand your work, help you evolve and shift?
Isn’t that what we’re here for? To learn and experience what it is to be human?
I have a few classes coming up that were created in this same way:
Intro to Writing Your Life starts Monday, September 12th, and it’s not too late to sign up. Three weeks, $180. And I have a few need-based scholarships left that I’d love to grant!
The Autumnal Equinox edition of the Writing for the Seasons Series is coming up on September 21st.
I hope to see you.
One love,
Vanessa