Welcome

Welcome, welcome, one and all!  This being my first post on my first blog I suppose I should take the time and tell you, dear readers, who I am and why, exactly, I have decided to blog.  As to the first question -names hardly matter, I think, nor probably should they be divulged in consideration of future employment possibilities!  What does matter is that I am a teacher, a high school English teacher, or rather (currently) a student teacher.  I currently teach in a small, rural high school in New England - a high school with both great promise and great problems in a region which shares these common traits.

I, myself, am not some 22 year old Melvin off the streets who could not think of anything better to do with myself and decided - "hey, I will teach!  At least I get summer's off!"  I am in my 30's, am married, with a house and a dog and blood pressure medication and have, until this point, lived a life of adventure, wonder, (sometimes) daring explorations and avid intellectual curiosity.  In fact, the only reason I mention this is that often, I think, teachers get into the profession because they simply love school (that being all they have ever really known) and don't want to leave the classroom.  That is all well and good and I am sure there are many fantastic teachers who entered into the profession because of this, but I am not one of them.  Rather, I have re-entered the classroom because I am an idealist and I believe that knowledge and wisdom carry with them enormous responsibilities to steward onwards those ideals.  Also, to be honest, I have never really had a choice: I have been a teacher (of sorts) since the very earliest of ages and this professional manifestation is only the latest in a long series of manifestations.  But enough silliness.

I will be blogging about my experiences as a teacher, as a student of teaching, and about life as a teacher, in general.  This is a fascinating time to be entering into the field and I hope that by sharing some of my thoughts and experiences I can assist, inform,  or inspire others in their own journey as a teacher, or, at the very least, can let others into the strange world behind the classroom.


Thank you for reading and I promise that my future posts will not be so self interested and, hopefully, more insightful and humerous.  Keep reading!