Long Not-Strange Trip
View out my window at work
I found myself thinking about this blog a few times in the last week and decided to see if I could remember the password to get back in to it. Obviously, I did. Can I remember why I wrote it? Obviously, I can. I was in the middle of my third decade of teaching and thoroughly fed up with the educational system that continued to become every year more a place of schooling and obedience than of learning and growth.The last entry I wrote in 2011 was after an in-service day before school had started. I was excited to begin a new journey at a small school in the country where I hoped to have a good educational experience and to spend the last years of my teaching life doing some good in the sticks. It was not to be. In May 2012, I left that school–I would not have been rehired (the superintendent’s nephew had just gotten his teaching degree in English. He holds the position now)–and embarked on a new career. Since June 2012, I have been a truck dispatcher at a rock quarry. I have not regretted one day that I left teaching.
My last year of teaching was full of major ups and downs. This high school had only about 120 students, and I taught English for all 4 grades. Many of the students were difficult to deal with–they were not used to being held