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Education Memoir - any advice?

Teaching is in the news a lot lately - budget cuts, academisation, the teacher-retention crisis.  Having been a teacher myself for 20 years and experiencing a lot of the bad parts of the profession that are kept hidden from the public, I have written a memoir of sorts, focusing on this 'secret' side of teaching.  It details the journey that I took through teaching while working at a range of schools, all of which ended up in special measures.  My book talks about 'the good, the bad and the ugly' aspects of working in a school where the staff are placed under enormous amounts of pressure - and the shocking things that can happen as a result.  

I am keen to get advice on how to press ahead with publishing this piece of writing and would welcome any comments or advice on people who are/have been in a similar position.  I have begun writing another text that is also focused on life teaching in a school in special measures but from a different angle so I am brimming with ideas.  It is just the logistics of what to do next that is perplexing me.

Thanking you in advance,
Headache.  

Comments

  • Welcome!

    Who is your target reader? Once we know that we may be able to offer some advice. 
  • Thanks - I am hoping to appeal to adults, mainly members of the general public but I am hopeful that teachers and parents of secondary age children will want to read it, even if it just to make themselves more aware of the sorts of problems that exist for teachers in schools around the country.  I am basing it along the lines of Adam Kay's book about being a junior doctor, This is Going to Hurt - so it is an honest, funny, and sometimes painful reflection about the realities of life as a teacher.  
  • Have you looked at self-publishing? Then you could use the print on demand options - keeping costs down. You'd have to market it, but if it contains humour, local radio may give you some airtime. More serious writing can be harder to place (depends on so many factors).
  • So glad all my children are out of the secondary school system.
  • Hi, Headache!
    As a former teacher, I sympathise.

    If you want to go straight to a traditional publisher, try to find out who publishes books in a similar vein, Adam Kay's book, for example, or anything autobiographical, e.g. Spectacles by Sue Perkins. Bear in mind, though, that a huge number of publishers only look at work from writers with agents... so you might have to find one of those first, which is no easy task!

    But self-publishing has really taken off now so is worth looking into.
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