When I first began my teaching career in 2011, I prided myself on two things: my ability to connect with students and my classroom management. I wasn't always the best lesson planner or designer of rubrics, and I certainly wasn't always fired up about professional development and the state of education, but I could create…
Continue reading ➞ When the Rug is Pulled: Humility, Identity, and Other Such Things
Sometimes all it takes is a pair of shoes to shift everything. In fifth grade, my supremely cool step-mom took me to see Clueless and then proceeded to whirlwind me around Westside Pavilion on a shopping spree to mimic the far out fashion of the film. We're talking plaid skirts and knee high socks, patent leather…
Although I have left my job as a teacher, I think about my students and their families regularly. I definitely miss the joy those kids brought to my life. (At the same time, I really really really love how...hmmm, what is this peculiar feeling? Oh! Relaxed! Rested. Yes, I really love how relaxed and rested…
Each trimester when grades are due, teachers across the country (or at least across the westside of Los Angeles) wither under the writing of ten to twelve sentence paragraphs that must capture the academic achievement, behavior, effort, growth, and 'areas for future improvement' of their students. Some of us write only fifty, some a grueling hundred,…
Teaching is hard. I don't care who tries to say otherwise. Those who do have clearly never taught. It's one thing to constantly be "on" at work and very rarely given a moment's peace. It's another to write lesson plans, implement them, give assessments, grade them, manage the classroom, model consistently positive behavior, communicate with parents, differentiate…
Teaching is what I do for a living. It puts food on table and pays the rent. There have been moments where I have loved it. It was what I thought I always wanted to do. But like so many of us, the job begins to drain us of our inner source rather than fill…
Ah, the work place. Is there a better environment in which to stir up all of your deepest triggers and fears and childhood wounds and place them on the table to finally have a reckoning? It has been for me. I teach at an independent K-8 school in Los Angeles. It's sort of a progressive…
A Full Life 