Introduction and Purpose
It is easy to grouse about how my career robs and has robbed me of time, opportunity, health and ambition’s fulfillment. I am a teacher…by choice and not by default. Teaching is as pure and true an expression of who and what I am as I can come by. It’s what I do and I am at my most content when I do it. Sometimes I forget that, for I am also a public educator which makes my relationship to the job quite complex. From bell to bell, when I’m teaching my charges, tutoring or working on my lessons and their results, I am the happiest I ever am. During passing-periods, however, when the phone begins ringing or before and after school when dealing with the demands of those who cannot teach and yet, ironically, write laws and regulations about how it should be done, I am at my most miserable. During the hour-long commute home, the flabbergastingly insipid nescience of those intrusions mixes with my natural melancholy and cynicism, and the joy I felt earlier when in my classroom is clouded and even eclipsed. I temporarily forget and begin to resent one of the few things in my life that I believe to be truly worthy. When this happens, it is difficult to redirect my thinking and realign my perspective. Hence, this page, wherein I hope the effort of gathering material for it will act as a reminder that beyond all the bull-shit, beyond the district office’s sanctimonious ignorance, beyond the politicians’ mad scramble to justify their paychecks, the mission remains, the horizon is clear and my inner compass–though challenged and abused–still points true-north.