Another Introduction

From M. Shelley
I guess you could say that we wanted to start playing around with writing about the ideas that we often struggle through in conversation, and thus, this blog was born.

I'm in my 13th year in the business--the only business that I have really ever known in my adult working life. That means 11 years in the high school classroom in three different states and five different schools if I include my student teaching semester. The other two years were full time graduate coursework for me, where I supervised student teachers and taught methods classes to earn my keep at my university. The graduate degree is still plaguing me as I try to finish my thesis along side teaching high school full time.

I have taught in a wide variety of settings: urban, suburban, semi-rural. And even though each of these settings brings with it a unique set of challenges, there are some things about this job that have been universal for me: I love what I do and I know there is nothing else I'm supposed to be doing, even though it exasperates me at times. The joy comes in dealing with the students. The frustrations come in how everything else often gets in the way of providing an educational experience for each student that will enable him or her to thrive as a human being.

(Hopefully F. Scott and I will remember to focus just as much on those joys in this blog as we do on the frustrations.)

Hello from F.Scott

Ha! First Post.

Well- this will be by way of an introduction. We have, for reasons that will perhaps become obvious, chosen to be anonymous here. We both wanted a forum in which we could discuss the very strange nature of our professional lives, present some thoughts, perhaps spark some thinking. We also wanted to be free to say what we really thought. As in most professions, we all do a bit of self editing as we go through our daily lives. In the politically and socially charged world of education, this is even more so. I hope that here we will be able to address directly that which we do not feel able to address in our offices, departments, classrooms and districts.

I have been teaching in the classroom for about eight years now. Before that I had a professional life quite different from this, though I have always worked with people, often young people, and the general dynamics and skills that inform teaching have always taken center stage in my work life. I never thought I would be a teacher though. I had to take a rather circuitous route to get here. However, now that I am here it is clear to me every day that I was built to be a teacher. Unfortunately, I also wonder every day if I the job I am doing and the way I am often asked to do it is sustainable, functional, and even more if I am really serving the kids that come through my classroom door. 

Where this blog might take us is a big unknown right now. If it serves as a vehicle for larger discussions, more thinking about how we educate our children, what our society wants of itself- then it will have achieved far beyond my ambition. After that- who knows?

Starting hopefully...

F. Scott