Matt Eicheldinger on Teaching and Writing

From Teaching to Writing

Building Strong Relationships

by Matt Eicheldinger

Stories have always been a part of my life. I have some pretty early memories of my parents tucking me in at night, but before they left, they would tell me a story with me as the main character. Most of the time it was me using my karate moves to defeat an enemy or win the big game. Luckily, these stories didn’t go to my head, and I’ve stayed grounded, but I really enjoyed hearing a new story about myself every night.  

Maybe that’s why I remember so much of my childhood. It was almost like being trained to keep track of my own narrative. That’s why I can remember how I felt when I entered my third-grade class in 1994, but not necessarily putting milk back in the fridge and instead putting it in a cabinet. You can ask my wife to verify how much I do that.  

When I became a middle school teacher in 2010 though, these memories quickly became part of my classroom. Instead of handing out candy to students like some of my colleagues were doing, I started telling stories from my childhood as an incentive to help motivate my students. I kept these stories in something called “The Story Jar”, a literal glass jar in my classroom. If we finished a task early, or the class all did well on a project, I would pick a story from the jar and act it out for the class. I quickly realized how easily I could relate to my students by telling them embarrassing moments of farting during a school play, failing at my first kiss, and getting trampled by a llama. 

Quickly, the stories became an instant hit.  

However, I wasn’t confident I would remember all of them ten, or twenty years later. So, at the age of 21, I decided I should write them down before I forgot. However, as I did this, a story unfolded I did not expect. I started connecting all these mini, exaggerated stories from my childhood until I had a plot, and then subplots, and major and mini characters until suddenly- 

I had a book.  

I called it Matt Sprouts and The Curse of The Ten Broken Toes, a fictional, yet mini autobiographical compilation of embarrassing and true stories. I had no plan other than to print it and let students read it if they wanted to so we could get to know each other better.  

Oh, and in case you are wondering, the answer is yes… I have broken all ten of my toes.  

That was the most common question I got when students started reading my book. That, and “When will you write the next book?!” 

Because of their response, I knew I had something that could hold the attention of middle grade readers, so I decided to pursue publication. For the next decade I tried. I tried really hard. I wrote hundreds of letters to literary agents, and received hundreds of rejections, partly because no adult saw what I saw: it was a very funny and relatable book, and it had been field tested for years. 

I finally decided to self-publish the novel in 2021. Two years later I had sold thousands of copies, won a few independent book awards, and ultimately got picked up by Andrews McMeel publishing for a multi-book deal to continue writing The Matt Sprouts series. 

But there was a hiccup in the book deal. The publisher wanted me to illustrate the novel. I have no formal training in any art form, but there was something else I had been doing for years with my students that suddenly came in handy: 

I have been drawing my students since 2010.  

At the end of each year, I capture my students in cartoon form and create a coloring sheet. Each class drawing features unique inside jokes, memories from class, and even some easter eggs of moments I shared with particular students.  

So, the answer then was yes. I’ll illustrate. 

As I did, I showed my students the sketches and ideas, and they gave me their honest, and sometimes blunt, feedback. They really are the first editors of the book! 

It really is strange for me to think about the creation of my first novel too: a book written for my students, read by students, and vetted by my students! That’s why I like to think about it as not just my project, but a project of many that stemmed out of something that is crucial to being a successful teacher: building relationships with your students.  

So often we think it is the student that must connect with the teacher, but often I find it is the other way around. I need to connect with my students, and to do that I need to be vulnerable and share things from my own life. There is no way I could have persevered through some of the tougher moments of rejection without my students. I couldn’t tell students to chase their dream while simultaneously giving up on mine, but I also didn’t want to sugarcoat the process for them either. Over those ten years trying to get published I showed my class every rejection letter. Their response? A lot of questions.  

How are you feeling? 

What will you do next? 

Are you going to keep going? 

Does this mean it’s over? 

These are the types of questions that lead to a greater connection with each other. Who are you at your core? Who are you when things are not going your way? As a teacher, when you begin to share these deeper feelings with your students you also get them back in return, and that is when you can start to navigate education together; you’ve built a foundation of trust.  

As a teacher, this is what I want my students to remember about me. Not necessarily that I achieved my ultimate goal, but the process that it took me to get there. From the outside, it may seem that I did so much of this on my own, but the reality is I had many people support me on the way, including my students.