karenhealey

What does my learning how to be a teacher entail? It looks like this:

Weeks 1-3: Center block!

Seminars (behaviour management, planning and assessment prep, collaborative learning workshops, etc etc - practical teacher knowledge)

Academic bids (we research in pairs or groups and then present our findings in order to demonstrate understanding - academic teacher knowledge we can put into practice)

Weeks 4-9: Teaching placement!

We're in a school, teaching. I was teaching a full class on my second day in my last school. It was awesome. And terrifying. But also awesome.

"Teaching" involves planning, assessment, resource preparation, involvement in school life, professional conduct and contributions with your senior colleagues, meeting attendance, club activities, and the part where you actually have a classroom with a bunch of students in it who need to learn something.


While teaching, we get observation, feedback and consultation.

Observation and feedback happen whether we want it or not - tutors come in and watch us work, note down the things we're doing great and the things we need to work on, and then tell us. It's up to us whether we listen. You can bet I listen.

Consultation is us actively seeking help or advice - "Homg what is a unit plan and how do I use pre-assessment to help create one?" "I need some literacy activities for my Year 9s; resource tips?" "How do I differentiate learning in a class where I have high achievers and kids with a lot of learning needs?" And so on. Different questions, depending on our classes and our experiences.

Week 10: Bidding week!

All that teaching we just did? We reflect on it. For pages and pages and pages, assessing whether we hit the criteria, what we'll need to do next time to get them, etc etc. Word count isn't actually important, but just to give you an indicator of the amount of labour involved: In the last bidding week I wrote ~14 000 words in five days. (Actually, I wrote 14k in four days and then my hands stopped working, thanks RSI). This was on the low side - some people did closer to 30k.

Week 11-12: SLEEP.

Or in my case, line edits. BUT ALSO LOTS OF SLEEP and also lots of pleasure reading and baking and Mass Effect. Shep/Garrus, all the way.

Right now we're in the center block, doing academic work. So when Roomie Matt comes home, it's usually to this:

Me: *slightly glazed* Matt! Do you want me to teach you about the social, educational and political development of Maori since 1840 in terms of the Treaty of Waitangi?

Matt: Not... right now.

Me: I MADE A TIMELINE. Also, if you would like to learn about how tikanga can be practiced in the classroom, I found some great resources!

Matt: Good for you!

Me: How about the rationale for including Classical Studies as a social science?

Matt: How about, instead of that, you take a nap?

Me: GOOD IDEA. YOU ARE RESPONDING TO MY OBSERVED BEHAVIOURAL STATE AND SUGGESTING MODIFICATION THAT ADDRESSES MY SPECIFIC NEED; IE, TO GAIN RESILIENCE.

It is an intense course. It is a great course. I am really happy I'm doing it, and I'm learning so much, all the time.

But that's why I'm not blogging much this year.

My first teaching placement is OVER!

... and now I have a week of full-on assessment. But before that begins, I get a glorious weekend, during which I shall BLOG. Like the WIND. If the wind liked to BLOG.

In the meantime, here is a question I answered on my tumblr, and am pleased enough with to submit to wider dissemination in a more permanent form.

"Out of curiosity, if you were creating a Captain New Zealand for the Marvel Universe, who would they be?" by franzferdinand2

OOOOH.

Okay, so I am a traditionalist - I think the Captain characters should have military backgrounds, and be patriots, though not tools for patriotism. They should in some way encapsulate (insofar as possible!) the public perception of the “ideal” of their country, and they should be widely adored by the public.

So, I’d go with someone fictional, but inspired by Corporal Bill Henry Apiata, VC, the most trusted man in New Zealand. Willie Apiata is the only recipient of the Victoria Cross for New Zealand, the highest military commentation we have. It was awarded when he carried a severely wounded comrade over broken ground, while exposed to heavy enemy fire.

He was also awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, which means his bravery has been recognised by two nations - not a bad start for a Captain figure. And having left the military, he now teaches adventure skills to young people. I think we all know I have a lot of respect for teachers!

So that’s what I’d do - someone with a fairly normal background (I’m just a kid from Brooklyn/Te Kaha) who pursues a career in the army and exhibits extraordinary valour and care for his colleagues.

I’d leap into fiction with the return - perhaps he pursues a teaching role in a school, and while the school goes on a field trip to a science laboratory, he surprises some saboteurs who are trying to steal some work NZ chemo-geneticists have been doing on the super serum. They fail to obtain the secrets, but in the process, my character is accidentally exposed to the serum and OH MY GOD now he has superpowers.

So yeah. That’s what I’d do.

Internets, y'all know John Scalzi's Big Idea feature at the Whatever, right? This is the feature where authors will tell you the Big Idea behind their latest release, also known as The Place Not To Go When You Are Poor And Have Instituted A Book-Buying Ban, Yes, On Everything, Even That Really Cool One, Oh Wait, Maybe Just One Or Two Or Five.

It's a great feature. Directly responsible for me spending a lot of money on very good books.

Anyway, the point is, I wrote my Big Idea for When We Wake, talking about (naturally) Sleeping Beauties, and why I wanted an action hero with verve to be my leading lady. Go! Read!

Time to talk about me!

No, wait, time to talk about MY NEW BOOK.

Internets, When We Wake has been released in North America. I was lucky enough to do a blog tour on five awesome young adult fiction blogs to coincide with this release.

BUT. I didn't really want to do a blog tour when people ask me questions and then I answer, because I already had lots of that kind of interview lined up. Even though I could happily talk about my process and inspirations forever (which reminds me, I owe you a Sleeping Beauty essay on Captain America) I didn't want to go around repeating myself.

SO. My awesome publicist was like, why don't they interview When We Wake CHARACTERS? And I said, yes! Faye, you are brilliant! They can interview characters on topics relevant to the book!

So that's what we did. Massive thanks to Faye and Little, Brown for organising everything, and even more massive thanks to the bloggers, who really put the extra effort in to come up with compelling, relevant, interesting questions! I am super happy with the WAKE UP tour, which you can read by clicking on the links below.

If you are in the US, you can also enter giveaways for the book!

The WAKE UP tour:

Bethari talks about media and communications at Novel Novice.

Abdi talks about immigration at The Book Smugglers.

Dr Marie Carmen talks about science and medicine at 365 Days of Reading.

Tegan talks about music at Forever Young Adult.

Joph talks about the environment at The Readadventurer.

Internets! Oh my gosh, it's been FOREVER.

Or nearly two weeks, much the same thing in internet time.

What have I been up to? Teacher training! Story of this year, Internets. If ever you find yourself thinking, "That Karen creature, what is she up to, why does she not post as regularly as she did of old?", you may then think, "Ah, teacher training," and nod wisely to yourself at your perspicuity. One should take advantage of every opportunity to nod wisely at oneself.

I also did some other stuff! Internets stuff!

1: Here is an interview I did with delightful Australian SF blog Spec on Spec Fic. A sample:

How did you go about creating the Australia, and Melbourne, of the future for your book? What kinds of research did you have to do?

Living in Melbourne for five years was good research! It’s such a multi-cultural place, something I tried really hard to get across – that excellent blend of style, culture and voice. I wanted to get across the way the lanes and broad roads feel, that combination of wide spaces and squished, secretive alleys. I did a lot of research on the likely effects of climate change on Melbourne and Australia, none of it particularly cheerful. And, as always, since I know nothing about trees, I spent some time on horticulture sites. Trees are hard!

Trees are so hard, Internets.

2: I went to Oamaru and launched When We Wake from the familiar comforts of the Oamaru Library, a place that has been a wonder and a sanctuary to me since I was nine years old.


When We Wake Launch in Oamaru Library

IT WAS AWESOME.

Fabulous turn out, great eats (thank you, Allen and Unwin! The cheese was magnificent!) and even the tech behaved! I did a sped up and truncated presentation of the Sleeping Beauty essays I've been doing for you, Internets, and it was very well received.

3: The trailer for When We Wake was released.



Oh, Internets.

Oh, Internets, I can't even tell you how much I love this trailer. Everyone loves this trailer. ALL BLACK TAMATI ELLISON LOVES THIS TRAILER, TRUE STORY*.

Those who have read the book may have noticed that Tegan has an American accent in the trailer. Also, hair. But I cannot even bring myself to be mildly perturbed by these details, because I LOVE THIS TRAILER SO MUCH I WANT TO BAKE IT IN A PIE.







* He was at my mother's school for an assembly and she played the trailer to the assembled students and afterwards he came and told her how much he liked it.

So, omg, and also, MUM. WHAT? OKAY.

Internets! It is time for the January Sleeping Beauties essay!

In the first essay, I discussed the European origins of the fairy tale. In the second essay I made some inflammatory statements about the Grimm brothers and told the sad story of Tchaikovsky yearning for critical approval. In the third, I talked about the Disneyfication of the story with the very pretty movie.

And now, Internets, it's time to get political, with Sheri S. Tepper's award-winning novel, Beauty.

I quite like a didactic book, a book that tells me to think about things, a book that makes a clear argument for a proposition. I am also pretty obviously happy to include didactic elements in my own work. I mean, the messages in my books are not particularly subtle: The narratives that you are exposed to shape your life, so think about them! Don't slut-shame people! Please don't kill yourself!

Sheri S. Tepper is a writer of didactic books, and how. Her messages are also not super subtle: Patriarchy is really bad for everyone, but especially women. If humans keep treating this planet like our personal rubbish dump the species will regret it. And so on!

Tepper’s characterisation doesn’t usually appeal to me, but her ideas and world building certainly do. She'll come up with a what if, and explore it. What would a gender separatist society look like and how would it function? (The Gate To Women's Country) What if humans were missing a racial memory, and that caused our frequent bouts of cruelty and sadism? (The Margarets). Interesting questions! Interesting worlds!

Often kind of weirdly formulated arguments.

Because while Tepper is doing all these interesting things, I cannot help having questions about so many of the things that are just assumed to be true as she explores her worlds and makes her points. Such as, what's with the genetically transmitted personality traits? Where are the queer people? Are you honestly equating people who create porn and cut down trees to actual rapists and murderers? Are you serious about this gender essentialism? For reals? Like… really?



In Beauty, Tepper's what-ifs go like this: what if the original Sleeping Beauty were born in 14th century England, the daughter to a duke? What if she had an illegitimate half-sister, born the same day, who looked so like her that the two girls regularly swapped clothes and played tricks? What if the curse of the fairy Carabosse was that the Duke’s daughter would prick her finger and sleep on the day she turned sixteen?

And what if it wasn't Beauty who fulfilled the curse, but her sister Beloved?

While everyone else sleeps in the enchanted castle, Beauty is left to go her own way. She is promptly accidentally kidnapped to the late 21st century by a time travelling film crew, who have come back to film the 14th century; the death of magic.

The 21st is depicted as a horrible place, ruled by the notion of Fidipur (feed the poor), where the billions of people in the world are equally housed in horrific 100 square foot apartment hives and are dispensed tasteless food made from sea algae.


The apartments presumably don't look much like this adorable converted attic apartment, which is actually even smaller.

In this Fidipur future, all the forests are gone, all mammals except for humans are gone, all things of beauty and art are gone. People caught trying to get more are sent down the chutes to die. Beauty manages to go back far enough to hit the 20th century, where she can already see signs of Fidipur beginning and learns from other time travellers that after Fidipur, there is nothing – eventually, by about 2114, humanity ends in everyone going down the tubes, because they cannot cope with the grim horror of their lives. So many try to go down that the machines clog and break and the bodies rot.

This is only the beginning of a complicated and involving plot, which includes angels, the Devil, fairies, magical realist adventures in a created world, a trip to Hell, and the revelation that Beauty is personally responsible for a lot of fairy tale figures - she is not only herself, but the mother of Cinderella, the grandmother of Snow White, and the great-great grandmother of the Frog Prince.

But Beauty’s real mission is to make sure that the future she saw never takes places – or that if it does, humanity will survive afterwards. Eventually giving up on her ability to defeat the “gobble-god” of greed and ugliness, Beauty instead manages to create in Westfaire castle a kind of Ark of beauty and art. This place is designed to exist outside time until Fidipur’s time has gone, and the human race can be revived. With, I guess, a feudal political system, because reasons.


I always imagine Westfaire looking like Neuschwanstein


The big problem I have with Beauty (well, one of two – a brief follow-up on that tomorrow) is that I think the Fidipur scenario is both too good and too bad to be true.

It’s too good to be true, because the Fidipur future Beauty describes involves everyone getting the same tiny living space and the same bland food substitutes and having to live by the same austerity rules. This assumes that people in power will decide to actually feed the poor and to allocate resources equally. That doesn't gel with what I've seen of human nature. I don't accept that all the people with enough power to enforce these rules would be satisfied with their own stark little cell and tasteless pap. I just don't think most relatively rich and powerful people would be overly concerned with feeding the poor. They sure aren't now.

(And yet, in an environment where this kind of equal austerity is practiced and brutally enforced, the people in charge (who we never hear anything about) do not take measures designed to reduce overpopulation and free up resources, other than killing people who break the rules. They just maintain the austere status quo. I don’t get it.)

This future is also too bad to be true, because I don’t think the mass suicide of the enormous population and the complete destruction of any kind of beauty is a viable projection. Beauty’s idea of the worst possible future is one where everyone has a place to sleep and enough to eat. It’s a grim, squashed-down kind of existence, but people are, right now, surviving in much worse conditions. They shouldn’t have to for a second, but they are. And while suicide and depression are indeed rife among people actually living in grindingly horrible circumstances, they are not universal.

When We Wake is, like Beauty, a Sleeping Beauty story that pays a lot of attention to what the future might bring. In the future of When We Wake, there are dwindling resources. There is overpopulation and due to rising sea levels, less living space than ever before.


Funafuti atoll of Tuvalu, by marlins @flickr. Sorry about writing that you disappeared, Tuvalu.


These limited resources result, not in equality, but in an even greater disparity between the powerful and the powerless, those with all the advantages and those with very few.

Some reviewers are calling When We Wake a dystopia. I don’t think it is, but bear in mind I’m the same person who wrote about people getting torn in half and someone eating someone else’s brains in Guardian of the Dead, and was then legit surprised when people told me it was a horror novel. When We Wake is just how I think humans might act, extrapolated forward.

I think they will be both better and worse than Beauty tells us. In my 22nd century, art and beauty and music don’t disappear. People can still be wise and honest and brave. But they can also be selfish and cruel.

In When We Wake, one of the questions Tegan has to face is why she's been brought back to life, at incredible expense, to be another mouth to feed in a world with billions of them. Who is being hurt by her revival? Who stands to profit? Why does she get to live again when thousands of refugees are treated as automatic criminals and kept in huge camps? What are the implications of her revival - what happens if it can be repeated, with the very many relatively wealthy people who have been cryogenically preserved in the century since her own death?

And does she, like Beauty, want to change the future?

The answers to the first questions are yet to be seen!

The answer to the last one is yes.



When We Wake will be available from Little, Brown and Allen and Unwin in March/February 2013. Pre-order through Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, or IndieBound.

Internets, yesterday I finished revising While We Run, the sequel to When We Wake.

Then I slept for TWELVE HOURS, and it was beautiful. At one point Roomie Matt came home from the place he has been housesitting and I was like, hey, noises, maybe I should interact with another person! So I did that, and then I went back to bed.

I am actually not positive if I dreamed him. I'm pretty sure I didn't. No! I didn't! There was laundry on the balcony!

It is so GLORIOUS not having anything to do. I think this is how people are supposed to feel about weekends, but I haven't really had weekends for most of my adult life, and neither have many of my friends. Creative types tend to have to fit the creativity around a job or activity that earns them enough money to pay rent and eat, so two whole days of free time that you have every week is this amazing yet mythical tale of which I have heard tell.



But I am on holiday until Monday! Although I do have to write my January Sleeping Beauty essay and also start a short story. Which is practically NOTHING. ACRES of free time!

SO today I woke up at 2pm. I did some laundry, I baked some scones, I played some WoW, I watched some Vampire Diaries and Parks and Recreation and I read some Avengers fic. And I was like, what else do people do?

They update their blogs!

Tomorrow: CHEESECAKE.

I thought I'd give you a glimpse into the revision process of While We Run, where I am currently smushing chapters together, grouping characters in different alliances, and inventing new locations.

(Why do I do this to myself?)

(… oh yeah because I think this will be a better book when I'm done)

When writing revised scenes, I tend to plan out a scene before I write it, first briefly while I outline the chapter, and then in more depth, so that the actual writing doesn't involve too much, "And then what happens?" No, that's an attitude for the first draft!

However, when I say "in depth", I don't mean "formal". For example, to conclude an argument between characters about what they should do next:

[Tegan says that she’s been praying, and she thinks this is the way to go. Bethari nods.]
[Abdi and Joph are like, atheist eyeroll, unite!]

And that's how we make literature!

It is probably emblematic of how this year is going to go that in order to finish this post in a timely fashion I had to deliberately stop working on something else. With an intense teaching course that has to be my main priority, plus a book to launch, plus another one to revise, plus various Secret Projects, this promises to be a very busy year for me. Fair warning, internets, you may not see so much of my blogging as hitherto.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before I look forward, I want to look back.

I lived with my parents last year, mostly because I couldn't afford not to. This was humbling at first, but not nearly as frustrating as I had expected, and I outgrew the (futile, unnecessary) shame fairly quickly. After all, I got to live rent free in a beautiful house with views that included adorable lambs, beautiful mountains, and the sun rising over the ocean. There are much worse positions to be in.

I became, by necessity and inclination, much tidier, because my mother is one of those mothers. That's something I'm planning to bring into this year, and those following. Living in tidy, comfortable surroundings is much better for my peace of mind! Who knew?

I worked retail, for the first time in six years, and it was much better than my previous experiences - because I've grown up, and because I was working with a genuinely awesome group of people. Honestly, if the company had paid us anything close to what we were worth, I might have chosen to stay another six months.

Writing-wise, it was a prolific year for me, although the results are naturally delayed, publishing being what it is. My short story, "Mrs Beeton's Book of Magical Management" was released in the excellent YA anthology Wilful Impropriety This was my first short story sale, and I was very proud to have it be under the aegis of the excellent Ekaterina Sedia.

I made my first foray into self-publishing, with the essay collection Teen Movie Times. Available at Smashwords, the iTunes store and Kobo.com! Very cheap, especially at Kobo! I'm really satisfied with the work I did on that book. So far there have been sufficient sales to pay for the cover art and make a small profit, which is even more satisfying.

In the fading days of the old year, I packed up my every belonging (I had more of them than I expected) and moved them back to Christchurch, city of my heart. I will reside and study here for the next 12 months, and then we will see what happens next. Won't that be interesting?

It was a good year, Internets, and it put me in a good place to move on to the next stage in my life of adventure.

Karen, you say, enough of this chatter, how did you do on your New Year's Resolutions? And do you have any for this year?

WELL, let's see!

I made three resolutions last year:

1) To read the Brontes.


Success, internets, most excellent success! I read every novel by those ladies, and on the whole enjoyed the experience. I hated Wuthering Heights, and despised The Professor, but liked Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey, and adored Shirley and Villette. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, perhaps surprisingly, did not press all my buttons - I really liked it, but not as much as I'd been expecting, given its reputation for fierce feminism.

I therefore rank my Brontes with Charlotte first and Emily last, with Anne hanging out in the middle, making faces about the Demon Drink. The resolution also had an unexpected but not unwelcome effect; while avoiding Wuthering Heights, I read a lot of other old English (and one American) books in strange procrastination. Entertaining and useful!

2) To read all of Shakespeare's plays that I hadn't already read.

Failure, internets, most abject failure! I got part way through A Comedy of Errors and gave up, and that was some time in November. King John, you will have to wait a little longer to inflict your notorious awfulness upon me.

3) To blog every day.

Failure? Sort of? This didn't happen, but I do feel that my blogging this year was of generally good quality, and that was really what I was aiming for. So I will declare the resolution a success in spirit.

So, one and a half out of three! Not bad at all.

And do I have New Years resolutions for this year, internets? I do! Three of them! But since one of them refers to my sleeping habits, I must stop typing soon.

Instead, I resolve to tell you my resolutions tomorrow. See you then!

ME: I am currently wearing PJs that say "given enough coffee, I could rule the world". Which I think could be true. Like, if I controlled all the coffee harvesting and distribution channels, I would have some pretty serious economic clout.
BFF ROBYN: That was my first thought.
ME: We are nerds.
BFF ROBYN: Very true.

Internets, I was invited to take part in the Book Smugglers' annual end of year holiday celebration, Smugglivus. My post is on the Top Five Old Books I read this year, with BONUS When We Wake Giveaway draw. So get over there and enter!

Ooof, Internets, yesterday I had Retail Job from 4pm to just after midnight, and it was 50% off women's clothes, and I was like to die about two hours in. But alas! I had to come home and write a speech for my mum's school's final assembly. That went well, and then I went home and had a nap, so I pretty much threw away a day on smiling at kids and sleeping. I have no regrets.