A NOTE ABOUT THE FIFTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THIS IS NOT A TEST
I wrote this book for you.
For some of you, it means I wrote this in love. There’s always that first visit to the local bookstore when we scan the education section and don’t see a book that tangentially relates to your qualms and visions. Most of the narrative-based books are written by professors, ex-educators, celebrities, and wunderkinds with a connection to a highly visible outlet for their story. The ones written by actual classroom teachers – the very few there are – are relegated to instructional books that publishers can sell en masse to districts flinging their arms for a life raft.
At the time, there were plenty of people implicitly competing for the “best” teacher blogger, teacher writer, or education writer. Some publishers forced teachers with narratives to follow the instructional template even when the educator had an actual set of stories to tell. Other publishers just threw as many books out as possible in hopes that perhaps one would stick. Some people write books in hopes of raising their platforms, knowing they’ll have plenty of opportunities (and connections) to write more. Some even wrote books as a “teacher” even when they left the classroom and schools a long while ago. I went into this process knowing that this one book would have to both convey the urgency of now and last forever because teachers like me rarely get opportunities for more than one.
Haymarket Books offered me the opportunity to be a legit author and not just because they’re a well-respected publishing house. Julie Fain and Anthony Arnove took a huge chance on me. Liliana Segura printed out my manuscript and marked more than half of it in red at our first meeting. That, too, CONTINUE READING: A Note About the Fifth Year Anniversary of This Is Not A Test | The Jose Vilson