School is out, but the teacher is still in
Teens’ need for quality stories
drives former teacher to write
BY GLORIA STRAVELLI
Staff Writer

CHRIS KELLY staff Patricia Martz Heyer, a retired Red Bank teacher, will be drawing on years of experience with adolescents as she embarks on a career as an author.

Patricia Martz Heyer wasn’t one of the schoolteachers heading back to the classroom this month.

A special education teacher in the Red Bank Middle School for 32 years, Heyer retired her plan book three years ago but has continued her life’s work of teaching young people, this time in a new career as a children’s book author.

"My goal is to write interesting stories that touch their hearts, make them think and sometimes laugh," Heyer said. "I would like to write books for teens that they can’t put down, and once they’re finished, they hurry off to e-mail their friends: ‘You gotta read this ...’ "

According to Heyer, one of the challenges she encountered as a special education teacher was the dearth of interesting and informative books for her students to read.

"Much of what was available had no educational value and little scholarly value," she noted.

Not only were the books boring, but they didn’t keep pace with the changing role of teens, she added, and children’s authors weren’t writing about issues today’s teens deal with in the real world.

"Kids are much more worldly in the sense that they’re more open about sex, drugs, violence," noted the Red Bank resident. "Their attitudes have changed as society has changed. It’s tough being a teenager today. They’re being pushed into being adults when they don’t have the experience to make the decisions they’re being pushed into making.

"It’s critical the literature present life situations on all the universal topics, peer pressure, decision making, and through a story, show how this character solves or at least faces that problem," Heyer added.

"If you’re a good, responsible author, you will talk about the alternatives to any situation, lean to the positive and give them direction," she said. "I feel a children’s author must be like a doctor, ‘First, do no harm.’ "

There weren’t many career choices for girls in the little village of Ringgold, population 135, tucked away in northwestern Pennsylvania, when Heyer was growing up.

"It was the glove factory or have 12 children," said Heyer, one of seven siblings and the first to attend college. In love with school, with learning and with books, Heyer already knew she wanted to teach when she enrolled in Slippery Rock State College.

While pursuing a teaching degree, she volunteered to help out at an event for special education students and discovered her vocation.

"The next day I said, ‘This is it.’ I knew these were the kids I wanted to work with. I jumped into it and never regretted it."

The allure of the Jersey Shore lured Heyer to New Jersey after graduation.

"When I graduated in 1969, there was a shortage of teachers," she recounted. "A school recruiter from Red Bank came to the college. The recruiter said, ‘It’s only 2 miles to the ocean,’ and I said, ‘Wow.’

"Plus, the starting salary was $2,000 more a year than in Pennsylvania. I came down, and they took me to the beach. I signed on the dotted line."

But the move from her rural hometown to Red Bank was difficult to navigate.

"I packed up, moved and didn’t know a soul," she recalled. "It was immense culture shock. People were different from in my little rural village. It took me a while."

Immersed in teaching children with special needs, Heyer soon became aware that there was a lack of good reading material for preteens and teens.

"When I first came here in 1969, there was nothing in the way of readable materials. Special ed was like a stepchild," she said. "I had to write stuff. I took vocabulary lists and wrote stories. It was a massive amount of work."

The children’s literature that was available didn’t interest her students and authors often talked down to teen readers, telling them how they should act, think and feel.

"Teens don’t want to be lectured," she noted. "They struggle with a complex and changing world, and they’re exploring career options, family situations, finances, sexuality — some very complicated feelings about themselves and the world.

"Literature today is a way to show teens how to resolve feelings and conflicts they are facing," Heyer explained. "A good book presents alternatives and opens the door to a range of possibilities for the young reader.

"A good book presents ways to deal with real life."

After more than three decades at the middle school, Heyer decided to segue from teaching in a classroom to teaching through the written word. She would draw on her years of experience with teens to write books that would entertain and inform.

"If it doesn’t catch their interest from the first page, you have lost them," she admonished. "When you do your job right, they don’t even know they’re learning. I want most of all to share my love of learning and foster a lifelong love of reading in all children."

After she retired, Heyer looked around for a writing program and enrolled in an online course with the Institute of Children’s Literature. She was fortunate to be matched with a mentor/teacher who helped her develop as a writer for and about teens.

"He taught me so many little tricks. I had done mostly functional writing," she said. "He was able to teach me some of the art of writing."

Encouraged by her teacher, Heyer entered an article in a magazine contest and won. It was her first published article, and she was hooked. A second article was just as successful, and Heyer now has several articles under consideration by publishers.

There are signs that she will be a prolific author of children’s literature. Heyer already is shopping for a publisher for a planned six-book contemporary mystery series which has a teenage girl as its heroine.

"When I started reading literature for girls, I got really upset," she explained. "I was reading well-known authors, and I was aghast because in 2003, I’m reading a book about how a girl’s joy in life revolves around a boy. I couldn’t believe a publisher would do that today.

In Heyer’s planned series, heroine Lily Chen is a 10-year-old girl who lives in New York City’s Chinatown, a favorite haunt of Heyer and her husband. Lily’s policeman father was lost on 9/11, setting the stage for the character to deal with difficult emotions, to grow and to develop, Heyer explained.

"She wants to be a detective and solve things. She’s a feisty kind of nonstereotypical 10-year-old who will grow to be 16 years old in the series."

Heyer has a wealth of story ideas waiting to be written. Another book is already outlined and ready for consideration by publishers.

"Ancient Dreams, Modern Nightmares" is a mystery for teen boys and girls. The book tells the story of Miguel, a 16-year-old Latino who is attending a school in New York City on a scholarship and who has a job as a junior intern at the American Museum of Natural History.

"This is his family’s American dream," she explained.

But Miguel becomes involved in a mystery that challenges his beliefs and clouds his future.

"He makes some mistakes, gets into a situation because of his machismo attitude," Heyer said. "He has to make some choices."

In a lesson for his real-life counterparts, Miguel’s mistakes cause problems but are the tools that teach him about personal honor.

"The lesson is that if you give up your personal honor, your dreams will become a nightmare of your own making," she said.

In her new role as children’s book author, Heyer hopes to write interesting stories that will give teens direction in making good life choices.

"I would hope that at least one young person would find alternative ways to face the challenges of going from being a teen to being an adult," she said. "That they would see the possibilities; that there are kids dealing with the same things and there are other worlds out there. If we don’t show them there’s something else out there, how will they know?

"And you can’t do that better than with a book."