Throwing the Line

To paraphase Dodie Smith from I Capture the Castle, I write this sitting near the sofa, next to a stack of CDs and a lukewarm cup of tea. Pardon the paper piles and Barbie detritus. Welcome to my blog.

I’m a middle school English and history teacher in a suburb of the Bay Area. I’ve been teaching for over 10 years and love – I mean love – my job. Its ceaseless demands notwithstanding, teaching is a condition of my being.

My commute to work is a lovely drive through rolling hills and a welcoming, eastern sunrise. This same spare early morning highway has opened my mornings for years now. And I’ve found myself thinking more and more about moments in teaching that I want to explore, open up, pause, redo, and mostly write about, as in life. So much flashes by unprocessed and unexplored. I sometimes imagine my teaching days as an upspiraling flourish of windblown papers, some heightened gust circling the room, cue Flight of the Valkyrie, I stand in the center, pencil in hand, choreographing the entries and exits, the adolescent arias and tragedy, until the denoument, when I (and don’t we all?) surrender to the inevitable, bell-ringing, uncollected snowfall.

Forgive the melodrama. I want this blog to be about my mistakes and successes. I hope to write about teaching practice and technology, pedagogy, and – this is where this thread leads me, I think – the humanity of our work. It is in the accord of both educational ideas and human experiences where I want to sit awhile, ask questions, throw out the fishing lure and  - honor the wait time, let the child be - hope for the pull.