Debut Author Interviews

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist's age.

• Joni Sensel on...Favorite Teacher
• Carrie Jones on...Favorite Teacher
• Paula Chase on...Favorite Teacher
• Ruth McNally Bradshaw on...Favorite Teacher
• A.C.E. Bauer on...Favorite Teacher
• S.A. Harazin on...Favorite Teacher
• Judy Gregerson on...Favorite Teacher
• Jeannine Garsee on...Favorite Teacher
• Tiffany Trent on...Favorite Teacher
• Laura Bowers on...Favorite Teacher
• Melissa Marr on...Favorite Teacher
• Sarah Beth Durst on...Favorite Teacher
• Julie Bowe on...Favorite Teacher
• Thatcher Heldring on...Favorite Teacher

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

I’ll have to go about a half-year younger: My fifth grade teacher, Ms. Storch, was a young and enthusiastic teacher who read to us for 1/2 hour daily — including the, for me, seminal The Phantom Tollboth by Norton Juster and several other great adventures I wish I could remember titles for. She also taught us in really fun, creative ways — learning science by melting ice cubes in our armpits, having bean-sprout-growing contests, learning language arts by cutting up and analyzing stuff in the newspaper, etc. Plus she had long, dark, hair, in those hippy-esque days, and I thought she was the prettiest teacher I’d ever had (and she was certainly the youngest). I’d love to reconnect with her somehow.

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

Imagine a man who laughs with his tongue sticking out of his mouth, wiggling like a tiny snake.

Imagine a man with wild, Einstein hair and a great love of books, Ray Bradbury and Stephen King.

Imagine a man who writes things on your papers like: I LOVE YOU! YOU MAKE ME ROAR! YOU ARE A STAR!

Imagine the same man writing: IT’S THEIR NOT THEY’RE ARGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Imagine a man who makes you believe that you could be anything, even a writer.

Imagine a man who makes all his high school students pledge to buy him a cottage on the beach if they become a massive money-making writing machine.

Imagine a man who on the second day of class says, “Students, you are now word merchants. Your task in my class is to string words together that make sense and have the power to affect the reader.”

This man you’re imagining is real.

This man is Joseph Sullivan, gifted writer, gifted teacher of creative writing at Manchester West High School in N.H.

This is a man I love. This is the man who made me a writer.

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

When I was my MC’s age, 9th graders were still in Jr. High. My junior high was connected to my middle school, which makes for this hazy mix memory in my head of the teachers and which teacher was actually at what school. Call it old age, if you want, but it’s really that the two schools were so closely linked that it’s hard to separate them.

Still, the one teacher that stood out was Mr. Johnson, one of the P.E. teachers. He was a gruff teacher with a soft heart and also the soccer coach. Well, when the soccer segment of P.E. rolled around he amped it up. Class always became more competitive during the soccer segment and God help you if you had any of his players in your class (I did). It was brutal because they had to look good in front of their coach.

Well, I hated soccer! I can remember standing in the middle of the field, one day, praying the ball wouldn’t come my way. When it finally did, I moved out of the way. Literally stepped aside so the goons chasing it could have it instead of trampling me for it.

To this day, I remember Mr. Johnson rolling his eyes, throwing up his hands and hollering “Jesus Christ, Tippy Toes!” across the field at me. He used to call me “tippy toes” because I ran real girly on my toes, like I was trying not to get my shoes dirty. Which is weird because I also ran track (and he was the coach) and that I excelled in. I just hated soccer! So yeah, I never tried.

Most hilarious thing in the world. I’m sure many would be appalled at a teacher using the lord’s name in vain in front of student’s no less. But Mr. Johnson was everybody’s favorite. He’d give you a hard time but it always came from a sincere place. You could tell he loved the students as much as they loved him.

The cool teachers are always the ones that seem to know how to talk to students just right. Which is a lot like writing for YA. When people ask “how” do I write for young people. How can I capture that voice. I don’t know. It’s like being the cool teacher with the great vibe with students - it’s something you either have or you don’t.

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

I had some really outstanding teachers all the way through school.
My character, Ellie McDoodle, is almost 12 and it’s summer. So that puts her between 5th and 6th grade.

My 6th grade teacher was Mr. Wallace, a very cool guy. We had long discussions with the whole class. I loved that. He taught me how to research my answers for debates. And we played some fun learning games in his class.

Special mention goes to my 4th grade teachers:
Mrs. Rogowski, who unfortunately had to leave halfway through the year, and her replacement, Miss Shortreed, who became Mrs. Marx later. I adored both.

Miss Shortreed read our class many books. Charlotte’s Web, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Harriet the Spy, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, many others. I think this is when I first decided I wanted to draw for a living.

In Junior High and High School I had lots of excellent teachers.

Good teachers are heroes.

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

When I was Augie’s age, I went to Collège Marie de France. It was part of a worldwide system of schools which follow France’s primary and secondary curriculum, and which allow students to take the French baccalaureate. There were two such schools in Montreal.

I was an average student, except for math, in which I excelled, and French (the equivalent of what is now called “Language Arts” in the U.S.), in which I did terribly. I was fluent in French and I read a lot, but I failed every single spelling test I ever took. I’m not kidding. Once a week, from first grade on, we had “dictée”: the teacher either read a list of words or a passage, and we’d have to copy it down. In the younger grades, the tests were graded on a scale of 1 to 10. In the later grades, 1 to 20. You lost one point for each spelling mistake. I averaged zero. Every year. Until I was about eleven and a half.

That was when my French teacher, Monsieur Bernard, became my tutor. During regular classroom hours, the class learned about Molière, Corneille, Racine, and how to write essays. Once a week after school, I met with M. Bernard for an hour. He taught me how to spell. We went over each spelling rule, one at a time, writing down examples, going over exceptions. We started with the basics and worked our way through each problem area, patiently, systematically. I never felt judged. M. Bernard made connections for me that I had somehow missed in the primary grades. I did not become a fabulous speller but I no longer failed French.

Four years later, I took the French portion of the baccalaureate. A few weeks after the exams, M. Bernard telephoned me.

“I just received the results for the essay portion,” he said. “Congratulations! You got the highest score in Montreal.”

I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t. I told him so.

“Believe it. I always knew you were smart. It was just the mechanics that got in the way. Once you understood those, everything else fell into place”

I don’t think that M. Bernard was my favorite teacher when I was Augie’s age. But, in retrospect, he was the best.

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

I’m sure I had many good teachers in high school, but I never paid attention in class. I should have, I know.

But I had a favorite teacher. He did not work at the high school. He was a doctor at the hospital where I worked, and I was passionate about my job. I wanted to learn. He taught me all kinds of interesting things about emergency medicine and surgery. He was a hero to me. I’d seen him save lives when the situation seemed hopeless.

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

I had this goofy looking Current Events teacher my senior year. He was a short, bald guy with a little beard. He made us read the NY Times weekly news roundup and he taught us about the Vietnam War. I think I liked him because he knew how to laugh.

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

In high school it was Mr. Peebles who taught Stagecraft and Motion Picture Study, among other things. He was the first teacher I ever had who really seemed like a “normal” person, and he was so passionate about his love for the stage and cinema, it was impossible not to be caught up in that enthusiasm. In my novel, I tried to convey this same passion through Martha’s music teacher, Mr. Hopewell.

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

When I was Corrine’s age (15), I think my favorite teacher was Ms. Arnold, who was our high school creative writing teacher. I think she probably had Parkinson’s or some other type of palsy that made her shake a lot, but as insensitive kids will do, many rumors were circulated as to the reason for her mannerisms and quirkiness. I don’t remember anything specific about her methods or any exercises we did in her class. I just remember being encouraged and made to feel as though my writing was worthwhile, no matter what I wrote. She always give me fabulous books as Christmas presents—poetry anthologies, Taoist philosophy, whatever my flighty fancy was taken with at the moment. The nicest thing she did for us, though, was to allow us to eat lunch in her classroom. Our high school was pretty scary; I narrowly avoided being beaten up several times by roving gangs of girls. So, she offered us a safe haven in the storm. She didn’t have to do that, but it was so nice to have a peaceful lunch with close friends. We still send Christmas cards to each other with annual updates. It was really fun to send her a Hallowmere postcard!

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

My protagonist is fifteen, but I’m going to cheat a little and pick Mr. Thompson, one of my seventh grade teachers. He was my favorite because he made each student feel special and not just part of an anonymous herd.

One day, he pulled me aside to give me a book about stunt horses used in the movies that he thought I’d enjoy, since I was a total horse nut. I was also a bit of a loner at the time, and the fact that he singled me out to give me this book made me feel so special.

I no longer have the book—maybe it got lost during one of my many moves, but I’ve never forgotten his kind gesture!

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

At my characters’ age, that would be my high school art teacher … She let me take art even though painting & sketching weren’t in my skill set. My strengths were/are in words & photos, but she let me take the courses anyhow. As a result, she was how I got to my first art museum. She’d also let us play music (*sigh*) and move about during class and sometimes work outside. I remembered that when I became a university teacher: I taught outside regularly.

I actually spoke to her last month for the first time since I graduated. Madwoman that she still is, she said, “I’m not at all surprised. I always knew what you could do.” She was the only teacher there that had that sort of faith in me. Despite my grades being all As, my black nails, leather jacket, & my social habits made most teachers (and my pincipal) see me as the girl who wouldn’t amount to anything, but my art teacher saw those same things as signs of individualism. Pretty awesome.

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

I have warm, fuzzy feelings for all my teachers. Each of them helped shape who I am. My favorites were the ones who liked my writing. And the ones who gave me nice grades. And the ones who brought Dunkin’ Donuts munchkins into class… But mostly the ones who liked my writing. :)

After I got the Call from my agent saying that we had offers for INTO THE WILD, I emailed my high school English teacher to tell her the news and to thank her for believing in me. Being able to send that email was tremendously cool.

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

Actually, I had one of my most unfavorite teachers when I was my protagonist’s age (nine). She was ancient and scary and wore a dress every day and put red marks on all my papers. She divided the class into three reading groups: The Roses, The Hyacinths, and The Tulips. We were assigned to a group depending on how well we could read. Of course, roses were best. I, alas, was a hyacinth.

Describe your favorite teacher when you were your protagonist’s age.

I am afraid most of my teachers in eighth grade were either counting the minutes until the end of the day - or retirement. I did have an English teacher who taught us to diagram sentences like they teach Marines to march. I was a grammar nerd and I loved it. Recently I discovered another much better known YA author also had this teacher in eighth grade. So, Ms. Benz, if you’re listening, you must have done something right!