Guest Essay by Lindsey Williams, Music Educator and Author
Guest Essay by Lindsey Williams, Music Educator and Author
I’m so delighted to welcome Lindsey Williams to my blog today, whose story and journey are so inspiring.
Stories: An Antidote to Burnout
On Writing Where the Valley Widens: A Teacher’s Journey Through the Ages
by Lindsey Williams
When I was young, I would sit on the wooden bleachers at my brother’s baseball games, chin in my hand, book in my lap. Next to me, my mom would chat with the other parents, while my dad, a marathoner, ran laps around the field.
“You are always reading,” one of the other mothers said to me one day. I looked up at her and she was smiling as she continued. “And I can’t wait to read the book you write one day.”
I didn’t believe then that I would ever write my own book. The stories I read were so different from the around me, but her comment stuck with me as I moved through school and into my chosen career of music education. All through college her idea nagged at me, but I didn’t have a clear idea of what to write about or the experienced perspective I felt like I needed to write well.
I got my first job in rural New York in 2007 and for the next 12 years I wrote mostly parent emails and lesson plans. I had the good fortune to move with the same group of students from Pre-K through high school and I wrote weekly updates to their parents for years. I grew up with those students, their progress mirroring my own as a young teacher.
We weathered everyday obstacles together, including a catastrophic flood that devastated our community and destroyed our elementary school. We rebuilt and remade ourselves with each passing grade and when the students were finally seniors, a year we had both worked so hard to arrive at, the pandemic cancelled everything. The year that should have held our final concerts was unusually silent, and in that space, I finally began to write.
I bought the book On Writing Well, by William Zinsser, since I knew I needed help becoming a better writer. I read a chapter every Saturday morning and wrote scenes with a singular piece of his advice in mind. My stories were all about school. I wrote letters to my students and vignettes of my most vivid memories. I typed out conversations that made me happy and in doing so discovered why I’d really kept teaching on those difficult days. 
Masked, we returned to school, and I kept writing in the mornings before the bell. I read every chapter out loud to my elementary-aged daughter and I reworked anything that didn’t sound like me when I said it to her. She listened, interested to see school from the teacher’s side.
I wrote about the heartache of missing my students and colleagues when they move on to college or new jobs. I wrote about the flood and about the other teachers who looked out for me even though they were in the same soggy boat. I wrote about my own mentor, who tragically passed away while I was writing the book. I filled pages with his wisdom, preserving what little I could of him and praying his words would help teachers far beyond our little school.
As I wrote I noticed another young teacher braving similar difficulties. So, I edited each chapter well enough to share with her and hoped my stories would help her the way my mentors had helped me. With each shared chapter, our connection and ability to help each other grew.
One summer, at a family vacation, the topic of “my book” came up at dinner and I read aloud the first chapter over slices of blueberry-peach pie. My extended family seemed to enjoy seeing school from the teacher’s perspective as much as my daughter and the rest of the evening was filled with laughter as they shared their own stories of school.
A few weeks later I got a call. A family member had shared a few of my chapters with a group of authors and booksellers who were forming a new publishing company. The company was called Compass Rose Publishing. Their mission was to connect independent bookstores with new authors, and they wanted my book.
With a deadline in sight, I wrote in every free moment. I sent my editor my first draft and a month later I received back a packet of edits to address. This back and forth went on for months and after nearly an entire school year of editing it was finally ready. Although it was difficult to edit with impending deadlines while continuing to be a full time teacher, I knew this was something I needed to do for all the new and tired teachers out there.
When I was writing the book, I imagined that all my work would be done once Compass Rose printed it and the publication date arrived, but I was wrong. The work was just beginning. This summer I visited many independent bookstores in New York like Riverow Bookshop in Owego, Theodore’s Books in Oyster Bay, and the River’s End Bookstore in Oswego. Each event ignited real conversations about school, its struggles, and about the mentors who changed our lives in the midst of it.
These conversations are so important. New teachers are leaving the profession at alarming rates, while veteran teachers suffer from professional burnout with each new initiative. Professional literature is packed with manuals on every topic connected to increasing educational achievement but what teachers—and students—need now, more than ever, is a story. We need a story we can see ourselves and our students in; a story that isn’t just about success. Teaching has always been about something else. Success is just a side effect.
On an August evening, community members poured into the Riverow bookshop on the banks of Susquehanna River for my first book signing. The shop was packed with people telling stories much like the ones I had set down in Where the Valley Widens. I signed the last book as the sun dipped below the hills and began packing up my things. A former student helped me carry my things to the car and our families lingered there, with our last stories, as a summer wind drifted across the valley. If I had ever struggled to see the impact of teaching, it was certainly clear to me that night.
The stories we tell our children hold wisdom that took lifetimes to learn, and we need read-alouds as much as they do. We need stories to guide and connect us with perspective beyond the nonsense we often find ourselves in. We need stories to reveal the essential in the everyday; stories you can read at a little league game and look up to see playing out before your eyes.
Where the Valley Widens is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, and wherever you buy books. Ask for it at your local bookstore or library.
Connect with Lindsey online at :
Instagram: @LindseyWilliamsMusic
Facebook: facebook.com/LindseyWilliamsMusic/
Compass Rose Publishing. https://compassrosepublishing.com/
Bio:
Lindsey Williams has directed award-winning bands at all levels in the public schools since 2007. She graduated summa cum laude from the Boston Conservatory, earning her BM in flute performance, her MMED, and the Conservatory’s Outstanding Music Educator Award. She has directed Binghamton University’s Wind Symphony and chaired numerous festivals and committees for the New York State School Music Association. An active performer, conductor, and clinician, Lindsey lives with her family and cats in upstate New York. She loves making music just as much as writing about it and you can purchase her latest book, Where the Valley Widens, anywhere you buy books.
Buy Links:
Amazon:
Bookshop