After seven years of teaching high school English language arts, I felt I had a handle on teaching. I felt confident establishing the classroom environment and culture to best help my students. I honored my own beliefs and passions. I even started teaching pre-service teachers about curriculum design! And then distance learning happened. The challenges these unique circumstances presented required me to stop and reflect. This was the time for introspection. From this look inward, I decided to take a step toward a goal I’d always put off: to share my experience and love of teaching, particularly curriculum design, with others.
In 2017, I earned my MAT and focused my research and thesis on academic conversations. A few years later, I was hired by a local university to teach pre-service teachers. This work continues to inspire me as a teacher and reminds me of the essential purpose of education: to teach and learn with heart.
Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
William Butler Yeats
From my own experiences as a student, I can attest to the ease in which the excitement for school and learning can be snuffed, and it is difficult to reignite. As a teacher, I see this disenchantment in my high school students, and I want to remind both my high school and graduate students of the power and pleasure in learning. As a teacher, new or veteran, it is likewise easy, and even tempting, to plateau, to simply arrive day-in, day-out and do the job, to check the box.
With this site, I hope to create a space where teachers and students alike can find inspiration to continue learning and growing. I believe teachers have an obligation to their students, but perhaps more importantly to themselves, to challenge themselves and their students, to refine their craft and curriculum, to realign their teaching with their pedagogy, and to have fun while teaching.
