World of Writing - Author Interview
Today we are featuring Emily Francis who will share her experiences in releasing her wonderful memoir. Her experiences as a high school ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher at Concord High School in Concord, North Carolina certainly played a role in her new adventure. Emily tells us that it was her experience as an immigrant from Guatemala that inspired her to become an ESL teacher and equipped her with a deep understanding of the challenges her immigrant students must overcome to find success. Recently awarded the Cabarrus County Board of Education’s Teacher of the Year, she continues to serve as a professional development facilitator, motivational speaker, and board member for the Carolina TESOL.
Emily invites our readers to check out her YouTube channel Astrid Francis -Celebrating Hispanic Heritage -- Or visit her on FaceBook
Q: Hi Emily !Why don't we start by having you tell us something about yourself?
Besides teaching English as a second language, I feel very strongly that my job is to inspire students to be their very best.
Currently, I go into different core instructional classrooms, where my newcomer students, and some long-term learners, are acquiring English and learning the skills they need to be successful in their court continent classes.
My job is to do what I can to remove language barriers and equip them with skills they need so they have access to the essential content.
Q: What a wonderfully rewarding career you have chosen! What are your greatest obstacles and motivators when it comes to writing?
A: As an English language learner myself, putting my thoughts on paper in English was very difficult. Even though I’m fluent in English and teaching English, it’s a lot more challenging than you might think.
The critical thinking in English is there in my mind but moving from processing the thoughts internally to getting them on paper is where the real difficulty is. It is also hard for me to move into the space where I’m writing from my heart.
For this book, I was able to get there by writing the book as letters to my students. By making a personal connection to them, my writing came to life as I made my story connect with layers.
Q: Very interesting! When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
Q: Very interesting! When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
A: For me, it did not start with writing a book. It started with writing a personal blog and learning how to share my heart. Some of the blog posts I wrote about my story went viral and were really reaching immigrant students in classrooms across the United States.
Blogging enabled me to be vulnerable enough to share the stories I told in the book about my life and where I have been. It gave me the experience and strength to share personal things in the book I had never shared before.
I guess you can say the interaction I had with students who were interacting with my blog posts really inspired me to write the book.
Q: Where did you find all the sources for your research?
Q: Where did you find all the sources for your research?
A: My own life and the lives of my students were the subjects of my story. As a teacher, early on, I learned the lesson that it’s important to get to know my students prior to teaching them any content. In fact, I had learned that knowing at least 10 personal things about each one of them was crucial to being able to teach them well. So, from the beginning of the year, I put in place procedures and activities that would enable me to better understand who my students are as people and what motivates them.
When I began to write, their personal lives became as much a focus of the story as my own. In the letters, my story intersects with theirs, and I hope, communicates with the reader any connections they can make to their own lives.
Q: What do you do when you are not writing?
A: When I am not writing or teaching, I spend a lot of time reading. I especially pay attention to books that provide “windows” and “mirrors” into the lives of different cultures and communities. Working as an ESL teacher, I have the opportunity to encounter students from a variety of backgrounds. Books that are “windows” are ones that enable me to see inside a culture that is different from mine. Often ones that reflect those of my students. Books that are “mirrors” reflect back at me my own culture or my own experiences.
I use social media (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc.) To provide recommendations for the books that have impacted me in some way. This has enabled me to connect not only with teachers across the United States but also with some of the writers. A number of them have been willing to review my book, so overall it’s been a great experience.
Q: Where do you hope to take your writing in the future?
A: I hope that I have more opportunities to get into more schools across the United States and really have an impact on students. Any writing I do will be centred on ways to connect students with their own stories, their own communities, and their own experiences at school and beyond school.
I’m also interested in doing a kids version of the book, one for early elementary school students, so that they will also be able to connect with and see the value of their own immigrant journeys and immigrant stories and those of their families.
Q: Did writing this book change your life in any way?
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A: In many ways, writing this book was a dream come true for me. It seemed to be the climax of various strands in my life coming together. I feel like the experience has made me connect more deeply with my own story and those of my students.
It has made me a more powerful teacher and has strengthened my family, because it’s our story. Through me, the story of our family has taken on more significance.
Obstacles and hardships we faced as a family are now part of a narrative that is impacting the lives of immigrant students across the United States. We will never be the same.
* Find Emily's book on Amazon
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Thank you, Emily, for sharing your writing experiences with our audience :)
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