I've spent the last week taking authors to schools around Ottawa, and I've noticed a few things. One - it's really hard to see the tiny street signs they have in the suburbs when you're stuck behind one of those gargantuan SUVs. Two, if I never had to be anywhere near Woodroffe, or make another one-handed U-turn while getting directions from a school secretary on my cell phone with a nervous out-of-towner in the passenger seat, again, I'd be okay with that. Three, and perhaps the most important: there are oceans of difference from one school to the next, and it has absolutely everything to do with the teachers.
Children's authors take note. This is a story about one item on my Santa Claus list of naughty and nice schools.
My first school on Monday morning, driving around YA author Lesley Livingston (a wonderful person, who, I think, HarperCollins believes is a very hot ticket, maybe the next Melissa Marr or even the next Stephanie Meyer) was Bridlewood Public School, in Kanata.
What I do is to send out a message to the school boards to let them know that the Writers Festival will be bringing children's authors into town to read free at schools, and all they have to do is get back to me to say they're interested, and I'll try to get to as many schools as I can. Someone at Bridlewood got in touch with me, and said they'd love to have an author, and I booked a time with her over email. So, we hoisted the box of books and the popup banner, and headed in.
When we walked into the office, the secretary looked up. "Hi," I said, "I'm with the Writers Festival, and this is the author who's supposed to be speaking this morning."
"Oh," she said. "I don't know anything about that. I'm subbing today."
There was a sort of weird silence. "Well," I said, "We're here... from the Writers Festival..."
"Who were you supposed to be looking for?" she asked. I told her. She looked at her list of contacts.
"Oh," she said. "I don't have a number for her."
There was a sort of weird silence. "Um," I said, "can we maybe talk to the principal?"
She turned around in her chair. "Their doors are closed..." she said, and sort of trailed off. The weird silence came back.
Finally I gave up, and decided to go check in the library. The woman in there seemed to have a notion that there was something going on, so I waved Lesley in, and we said hi. I set up the banner and we moved some tables and chairs to make room for the kids to sit on the floor. Eventually the principal came in and shook our hands and said hello, but then she left again. We stood around as the students - grades 7-8 - filed in and sat down. Chatted a bit with the kids, who wanted to know if we were sisters, because we really do look like we could be related. Then a teacher came over and introduced himself, asked if we were writers, and what this whole thing was about, with the Writers Festival and all. I explained that Lesley was actually the writer, and that I was here with the 'Think Ink' program of the Festival. Yes, I did write myself, as well as work at the Festival, but Lesley was the one who was really here to speak.
He was the one that introduced us. "Good morning everyone" - or something like that - "We're very lucky today to have these two ladies with us from the" - he turned to check the poster - "International Writers Festival, and they're authors. So they're going to talk to you about writing and their Festival and what they do. So I want you to be good listeners." And then he pretty much left to go sit down.
I glanced at Lesley, and then stepped forward, and pointed out that I worked for the Festival, and yeah, I did write, poetry, but that I wasn't going to be talking about writing, Lesley was going to do that. I gave my usual spiel about getting to meet a living writer, introduced Lesley and let her go.
She was great. She's comfortable with audiences and with teens, so she did fine sitting on the table swinging her legs, reading, answering questions. But the kids got squirmier and squirmier, and started getting louder and louder. Lesley had to ask them to settle down a couple of times, and the teacher next to me just sat there, zoned out, staring at the wall across from her. Like all the rest of them. One teacher in the back raised his voice to tell people to settle down and remained on his feet; the others all sat there and abdicated for an hour.
The question part got out of hand. Some of the kids asked good questions, but then things started going downhill. A long and tedious series of questions about whether she had [insert mythical creature here] in the book eventually devolved into these two lanky, belligerent, self-important boys in the third row, asking "So, are there any good authors coming to the Writers Festival this year? Like, is Robert Munsch coming?" and "Can you tell me how the book ends, cause I'm not going to read it."
No one said anything to them. To my shame, I didn't either. But what do you say? And shouldn't the teachers be doing something about this? But no, they were still just staring off into space, thinking about their bills or whatever.
Eventually the questions petered out, and none of the teachers had made any moves to wrap things up, so Lesley said something like, "well, I guess, um, I guess that's it, and if you want to get a copy of the book Kate's selling it, and you guys have been great," and then got up. I came over, the kids sort of clapped, and then they sat there until eventually the teachers roused and started desultorily getting everyone together to leave the room. Some of the kids came up to talk to Lesley, but then someone bellowed, "If you don't have any money for books, then get out!" and they cleared out, leaving us with about six very interested kids, some of whom got together the money for books, and one of whom was a very earnest, serious writer who got some great advice from Lesley about agents and the market.
Then those kids left, and we looked at each other. Even the librarian was gone; we were alone in the library. No one came up to say thanks, or to attempt to walk us out. We packed up our stuff, commenting to each other on how freaking bizarre the whole thing was, and then stopped in at the office to tell the secretary that we were very sorry we hadn't had a chance to thank the principal in person for having us (loudly enough that she could hear us in her office.) And the secretary sort of grunted, and we left.
"Well, that was ... strange," Lesley said as we headed for the car.
"You could even say it was wondrous strange," I said, and we got in the car, checked the directions, called the next school, and compared notes about the apparently drugged teachers and the rotten kids and the general lack of welcome or interest or spark of intelligence at Bridlewood while we headed over to W.O. Mitchell.
Now W.O. Mitchell, not a ten minute drive away, was a whole other situation. We got in and checked in with the teacher, who came out to the office to find us, invited us back to the staff room where they were still on lunch, set us up at a back table, got us some drinks, and introduced us to the other teacher who would be responsible for the readings (two sessions back to back, for two different groups of about 100 students each.) She'd already sent all her students to check out Lesley's website, and had been reading chapters of the book with her students already in class. We got set up a little before the bell rang, in the gym, with a microphone hooked up and the divider screen scrolling out to close off the space so it wouldn't echo too much.
The kids were great. They asked really good questions, and sat rapt through the reading, and afterwards they came up and mobbed Lesley to sign their shoes and notebooks and hands and backpacks and books and bits of paper. After the second session, the teacher who'd met us came back: she was apparently also the art teacher, and had made a gorgeous ceramic gargoyle for Lesley, which a couple of the kids presented to her. It turned out that Lesley collects gargoyles, so she was overjoyed by the gift.
A few kids stayed behind to talk about the writing industry with Lesley, who has really good solid advice for kids who want to write - stuff about avoiding scam agents and how to find out about query letters. Solid stuff.
We were walked out, thanked again, and I left my email address so that the kids who didn't have money could order more copies of the book. The teachers themselves bought about four copies.
The moral of this story, without even getting into Kathy Kacer's horrible experience at the same school the next day: Bridlewood School should be avoided at all costs. The Writers Festival sure isn't going back there. And good teachers - the ones that care, that put something into it, that show in their own behaviour that they're interested - make the difference between a terrible school and a brilliant one.
I rang it in last night at the Fireborn reading with the other Kymeras - we also got to plug