I think you could do worse than spend a few hours yourself in Three Corner Glen.
We interrupt this blog that typically addresses issues of educational leadership and high school teaching for this true and personal story:
Within months of the birth of my first child, the high school principal I was working for informed me that I needed to get started on my master’s degree pronto. I left that conversation with the distinct feeling that my future at the school would be in jeopardy if I did not immediately act on this directive. Whether that was the message my principal intended to convey or not, that was the message I received. So, very grudgingly, given the sleepless nights that come with a newborn, I enrolled in a master’s program at Regis University in Denver.
With lemons into lemonade glasses firmly in place, I can now reframe this moment in my life as a blessing. I got my master’s at a time when it made a difference. I studied. I learned. I had some truly enriching classes. I even had the opportunity to partially design my own degree path. This not only increased my earning potential when I truly needed it, but it also enriched my professional life in ways I did not anticipate at the time. I have had my master’s for the better part of 25 years.
Looking back, I realize that challenging conversation was significant. While it remains an experience that informs me to handle such situations far differently as a high school principal myself, I have since become close to that principal and consider him something of a mentor.
Oh. I also used that degree to help me write a novel.
The novel was my thesis project. It was, in fact, my third novel, but it was the first that I wrote knowing someone not related to me was going to read. It was the first upon which I received editorial feedback. It was the first of which I felt proud.
There is an educational point to this post, beyond the one I learned about ways in which to speak with those you supervise. It is that teachers and administrators need to engage themselves outside the work of the school. They need to have passions unrelated to their careers. They need to have balance.
The hundreds of hours I have spent writing and editing and rewriting and dreaming never feel wasted, nor do they seem like time I should have spent in work pursuits. They feel important in making me who I am as a person and as an educator. They are hours I need to have in my life.
I needed Three Corner Glen in ways I could not understand at the time.
The completion of this novel gave me the energy and confidence to write more fiction, which I do to this day. I submitted samples of Three Corner Glen to agents and publishers and continue to do so from time-to-time. To date, none seem particularly enamored of the work.
A few years back, I self published the novel on Amazon. You can get a copy HERE if you like. Perhaps the jacket blurb will entice you in a way it has never enticed an editor:
“While Craig Bauman was not entirely sure he wanted to be a father when his wife Stacy broke the happy news of her pregnancy, he was certain he did not want to leave his dream job as a sports columnist in Los Angeles, was sure he did not want to move to a suburb of Denver, Colorado ridiculously named Three Corner Glen and was sure he did not want to join a group of young parents forming a babysitting cooperative.
Craig wanted to be a person of importance. Now he was going to be a dad in a babysitting club in a Denver suburb.
As he drove from LA to Denver, Craig could not anticipate that joining the Three Corner Glen Babysitting Cooperative would lead to him becoming a fixture in the burgeoning community, especially after he and some other members of the group during one of their early meetings rescued worshippers from a burning church. That event would bind him to this group of parents in an unbreakable manner and forever link their lives.
Spanning over a decade, Three Corner Glen weaves the stories of the many people in the babysitting cooperative around that of Craig Bauman in a third person omniscient narrative voice that is clever, knowing and amused by the characters and their choices. It illustrates the joys of friendship and the consequences of choices. It reminds us that we are all bound together and that our life is a shared one.”
I think you could do worse than spend a few hours yourself in Three Corner Glen. Feel free to join me there.