In a career which spans over fifteen years in international education, I have had the opportunity to interact with educators and students from various cultures and at all stages of life. There is a common thread which connects us all; the joy of learning is alive in people who are actively engaged in creating their own educational pathway. Whether it is the kindergarten student who wants to use all of their senses to understand the makeup of the objects around them, or the business executive who would rather learn everyday English than management theory in an MBA, educational legitimacy can only be created through the freedom to choose and take ownership of the educational process. This idea, and its glaring absence in modern education, is at the heart of my novel, Chrysalis.
For the past seven years, I have been working at an IB school in South Korea, initially as a senior administrator, and now as a full time teacher. The road I have taken is well off the beaten path, but I feel like I have found my true home in the classroom, and I am passionate about supporting high school students as they go through the trials and tribulations of adolescence and young adulthood. I have always had a niggling itch to try and write a novel, and my time in high school classrooms has finally given me a subject worthy of writing about.
The entry, Chrysalis, is my first attempt at novel writing or any form of creative writing beyond some poetry I have written as an example for my students in class. It is primarily a young adult novel, borne out of the realization that there is a wedge driven between children, their parents and their teachers during the teenage years. In that sense, it is also a call for teachers and parents to try and recall their own struggle for identity and recapture the innocence of youth. Writing it has been a challenging process. I am constantly on the brink of giving up, and I would love to find out if there is anything worth pursuing there.
