ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: Emily Vizzo (’06, Teacher Education)

The versatile Emily Vizzo (’06, teacher education) has been a journalist, a middle school teacher and a poet. She can now add “published children’s book author” to her C.V.

In 2023, Vizzo and co-author J. M. Farkas published “Starflower,” a lyrical picture book biography detailing the tumultuous childhood and familial relations of renowned feminist poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay. 

A graduate of the San Diego State University School of Teacher Education teaching credential program, Vizzo said she was inspired to tell a story that — in addition to inspiring young students — could serve as scaffolding for teachers using the text in their classrooms.

As a former education reporter — with bylines in the Los Angeles Times and San Diego Union-Tribune — she chose to become a teacher as a means of deepening her understanding of systemic issues in schooling. She is now back in the (virtual) classroom, teaching creative writing at the University of Denver from her home in California.

The COE News Team recently caught up with Vizzo to discuss her wide-ranging career and what her experience in education taught her.

So why Edna St. Vincent Millay as the subject of your book?

“I earned my MFA while I was teaching at a writing-centered K-8 school in San Diego. While in the program, I read a remarkable biography about Millay called “Savage Beauty” by Nancy Milford. My friend and eventual collaborator had pointed me toward the biography — it's incredible, especially the parts about the childhood of Millay. I was immediately captivated by this remarkable story of a young girl growing up in a rural landscape with her two sisters, without much parental supervision. I grew up in a large family myself and I have six sisters of my own. I felt really interested in the role that the sisters played and I was very fascinated by their complex relationship. When we were thinking about the story, one of the things that attracted us to it was the challenge of telling a children's story in a very emotionally truthful way — one that didn't look away from the darkness, but also didn't try to be overbearing about it.”

Indeed, there is some darkness there, with themes of abandonment and illness. What was your thinking about presenting such delicate topics?

“My sister is a 4th grade teacher in a school district that serves a lot of children of migrant workers, a lot of undocumented families. I had many conversations with her when I was working on this book. We talked a lot about the fact that children are completely attenuated to the emotional realities around them. They're not fooled one bit by adults' attempt to layer over the emotional truths of their life. It can be a relief for children to be allowed a space to, in a developmentally appropriate way, to be able to kind of work through topics like an absent parent, or poverty or fear. I can draw connections to my own childhood, experiencing uncertainty or fear or grief.

“And I think that's where a good illustrator can come in. An illustrator can kind of depict moods in places where the words have deliberately left gaps, allowing the child to recognize a feeling and have some space to be with that emotion for the length of a page.”

Going from journalism into teaching isn’t a traditional pathway. Can you tell us about that?

“By the time I started my program at SDSU I had already worked as a newsroom reporter. As a journalist, I was assigned a lot of education stories and saw so much in the system that I wanted to help change. I wanted to be part of progressing things forward. I told myself, ‘I’ll teach for five years and then head back into journalism.’ I actually ended up kind of staying in both education and writing. They kind of became twin career paths."

How did your experience in SDSU’s program impact you?

“I think having the opportunity to formalize a systemic understanding of education through the program at SDSU helped me to far beyond the two worlds I had experienced — my love of being in the classroom as a student and then as a journalist, having this kind of critical eye but not knowing about pedagogy or the systemic problems that make the field of education so complex. Those two worlds came to a collision for me as a student at SDSU. I started to understand the intricacies and complexities of the profession.”

What was your pathway in education after that?

“In my second semester of student teaching I was hired on by my school placement, Rancho del Rey Middle School in Chula Vista. I felt really supported by my professors and by the program in general as I made that really important transition. From there I transitioned into online education, teaching middle and high school. I did that for four years.

“I also served as a McKinney-Vento school site liaison, presented at the Association of California School Administrators, received the outstanding 2019 Judicial Council Civic Learning Award of Merit from the Judicial Council of California, co-sponsored by the Chief Justice and State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Torlakson, and served as a panelist at the Nobel Prize Teacher Summit in Stockholm, Sweden. Along the way I also became certified as a National Geographic Educator, which I’m very proud of.” 

How did your education background factor into this book?

“One of the things that gave me a lot of joy in writing this book was thinking through the question of ‘If I were a classroom teacher, how would I teach this book?’ One of the seeds that my partner and I planted in the book very deliberately was being specific about, for instance, the names of the plants and the flowers that the sisters were interested in. It’s not only because we're both poets and the language and the beauty of the names was exciting to us. I was also thinking from a teacher’s perspective. How could this be a history lesson? How could this be a science lesson? How could this be a civics conversation? I was thinking through the ways that the book could be scaffolding for a teacher.”