About ten years ago, I gave a talk to a group of teachers about the connection between home and school. I had been hired to tell stories, but instead wrote a series of letters back and forth between a mom and the teachers her kid meets along the way. It was an imagining of how teachers and parents might communicate, based on my own experiences as a parent and my work in schools. Over the years, I’ve read it in various workshops and people have always liked it.
Still, that was all I did with it. It’s my tendency to finish one project and just move on.
This past summer, Debbie (wife, president of our huge corporation(?), and now publisher) decided it needed to be a book and that we would do it ourselves. We sent it out to a variety of people – writers, educators, parents – for review and made some changes. Our longtime designer, Alison Tolman-Rogers, helped with the design of the book. I drew a rough of the cover illustration and she did the final artwork and design. We got some quotes from people we thought would like it, including George Wood, a first-rate principal and educator, and Amy Dickinson of “Ask Amy”, who worked with me years ago at NPR. Everyone liked it.
After a lot of research, we decided to publish initially with the self-publishing branch of Amazon. Debbie worked with them very closely, sending proofs back several times to make sure they got it right. Since then, we’ve found a printer that does a beautiful job at a better price, so we have our own copies from that printer, and Amazon sends out their copies if someone orders it from them. (more about, um, Amazon in another blog).
So now it’s out, and it feels like we’ve touched a nerve. It’s a small, simple book, and can be read in one sitting. There is an underlying philosophy, but it’s the story of the mom and the kid and the teachers that reaches people. We’re getting orders from principals who are buying it for their entire staffs, and I’ve been asked to speak at workshops and conferences about the book and how the relationship between home and school can be strengthened. Parents are buying it as Christmas presents for their kid’s teachers. I got an e-mail from a teacher friend who said before she wrote a note to the parent of a student in her class, she thought about the book and how to best approach the problem she faced.
I am not an expert on teacher-parent relationships, but instead, someone who has given thought to it and tried to find a way to talk about it. I seemed to have found a way for everyone to listen and talk to each other. My expertise, if I have one, is in imagining how things might be, and then getting people to tell stories. As I say in the book, it’s the decision to keep communicating that is the most important thing.
Like Hippocrates said, “Life is short, art is long” – it may take a long time for something to bear fruit. Some small thing I did a number of years ago has taken years to bear fruit, and I never would have dreamed it could still be alive.
And then, I should add, you can order it here.
All humans are a “work in progress” no matter their age!! Communication is at the center of all growth, learning, and development to be the “best” person we can achieve.
Parents and teachers play such a vital role in a child’s life and yet, are often seen as “separate” influences and not on the same team . Love that creativity to connect both spheres of influence and role models for children to develop positive communication skills.
Bill, i’ve been a fan for as long as i’ve been a mom (my oldest is 21 now~how’d that happen?) and have always been touched by how your art reaches kids and adults! we still have a tendency to break out in a chorus of black socks or down in the backpack, mostly because the messages ring so true!!
Hippocrates was surely correct about life being short but art being long. sometimes you plant a seed and don’t see anything sprout, but in a couple more blinks – there is a fully grown organism!!
thanks for sharing with the world!!
Since we have a grandchild now, it’s been great to get out your tapes again! For Christmas Olivia will receive a CD/cassette player with some of her dad’s favorite Bill Harley tapes. Obviously, we need to update the collection. Thank you, Bill, for such great memories and creating new ones.
Hippocrates would be so pleased with you!!
Well, I still remember sleeping in her dad’s bedroom, with my feet sticking out of the sheets – Sesame Street? – thinking “What am I doing here?” So glad the curse is passed.
I find it interesting that when a child has a 15 minute doctor visit or a routine dental visit, a parent will normally spend time carefully communicating, with great concern and interest, with the doctor.
And yet many of us fail to communicate, with the same interest and concern, with the person who spends 6-7 hours a day developing our child’s brain.
My children are grown now. Looking back I wish I would have communicated more with the educators who were partners in helping shape my children. Get the book, read it…then gift it to a teacher. Better yet, buy two.
If you have younger kids…you have teachers. This book is an easy, enjoyable read that gently opens the eyes of the reader to what they should be doing in an already serious relationship.