FINE, I guess I’ll have my fourth root beer float in two days. If I must. And while I drink it, I’ll think about how crazy it is that I’m actually, seriously considering teaching next year. How weird it is to realize that might be what I want to do. So weird, in fact, that…
read more »Yes, I’m counting the days until the end of the year. Yes, I am all countdown/tested/retesting’d out. The kids are checked out as well. We need to get through the next week and we’re home free. We’ll get to finish our dinosaur unit and start on our physics unit. The kids are looking forward to…
read more »Somehow, I made it through two years of teaching without quitting. But I think I just watched a version of my past self actually do it. By that I mean I identified strongly with the difficulties one of our after-school employees was having, but couldn’t keep her from quitting. (Not sure if I wanted to?)…
read more »The Texas House of Representatives just voted to reduce the number of end-of-credit exams required for graduation from a record 15 (five each year from freshman to junior year) to just five. The push to scale back our testing regime came from all corners of the state and enjoyed near-unanimous support from both parties. The…
read more »I got an e-mail from TFA linking to a blog post on Teacherpop(1) entitled “Feel Unprepared To Teach? You’re Not Alone.” Based on the headline, I thought that this pertained to my interests. The author, citing the Gates and Walton-funded National Council on Teacher Quality’s State Teacher Policy Yearbook report for 2012, begins by showing…
read more »On January 26th, I was riding the bus home from a professional development workshop and I accidentally let my mind wander into the teaching world. Not thinking about teachers in general, or thinking about schools or districts, but actually imagining myself in front of a classroom. Thing is, these imaginings were not accompanied by…
read more »It’s now been four weeks since I came back from a truncated paternity leave(1). It is killing me to go to work these days. Each morning I change his diaper and he’s started to get infectiously smiley right when we wake up. I try to get my wife some breakfast and take our dogs out…
read more »My initial reaction to everything TFA was “it’s too good to be true.” Throughout the application process, induction, and institute, I remember consciously keeping an eye out for weaknesses in this organization that seemed to be such a perfect example of how to do a nonprofit right. Part of my incredulity came from the fact…
read more »On Friday, January 11 at 12:59 PM, my life was irreversibly changed. My son Ben — all 10 pounds, 4 ounces, and 22 inches of him — joined our family. I cannot describe the feeling of seeing him for the first time. And I cannot express enough the gratitude for my wife who carried him…
read more »Part of my new job is subbing every once in a while for the teachers of our after-school program, and today for the first time I subbed at a K-8 school on the side of town where I taught. I felt a filling bit of belonging, interacting with kids who could have been my students’…
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