Hello, there!
I teach middle school English at a Title I school in a large city. I had never considered teaching as a career, but found myself jobless after graduating with an English degree and thought teaching would be so easy!
(It wasn't. It was like a roller-coaster. In fact, if teaching was an actual roller-coaster instead of just an emotional one, it would be that crazy old wooden roller-coaster. Sometimes fun, sometimes "I'm going to die," and always just one loose screw away from collapsing.)
I started this blog during that first semester of teaching as a way to keep my mom and several close friends up-to-speed on the goings-on of my life as a teacher. I quickly realized that I would need to keep writing as a way to both process the changes that were happening within and around me and also to keep track of my teaching stories.
Five years later and I'm still trying to figure this teaching gig out. It's a fun, heartbreaking, hilarious, challenging, character-testing, deeply rewarding, and other-contradicting-adjectives journey. I write partly to show people who aren't teachers a little bit what the teaching life is like, partly to be in solidarity with other teachers, partly as a way to share the weird/important/funny stories in which I find myself a participant, but mostly to make you, whoever you are, hopefully feel a little less lonely and freakish.
Join me! This will be fun.
Love,
Teach
Thanks for helping me to laugh...and for labeling the long fall semester that reveals the darkside in us all.
ReplyDeleteYour blog brings a never ending amount of joy to my life! Thankyou
ReplyDeleteI love you. Seriously. I just discovered your blog through We Are Teachers, and you are hilarious! I love your voice and sense of humor. I feel like we have very similar stories - I also teach middle school English in a Title I school in a big city, with an English degree, and about four years in. Thank you for this blog, it's fabulous!!
ReplyDeleteYour writing is wonderful, both in content and style. I am a teacher too and you perfectly capture the essence of the profession in all of its conflicting qualities. Good luck on the next stage of your journey. Please keep writing--as you can tell from the feedback you have received, you are helping so many of us.
ReplyDeleteYou hit the nail right on the head! It describes so many of our lives. I have been teaching too many years to count and in more than one state. It is all the same, no one unfortunately is really getting the message. Our poor kids today are getting short changed on their education when in fact, they should be exploding with all the knowledge offered them! But instead, we get blogged down, in testing...so learning falls by the wayside...
ReplyDeleteDoes the title of your blog come from Up the Down Staircase?
ReplyDeleteDoes the title of your blog come from Up the Down Staircase?
ReplyDeleteA refreshing and realistic perspective. Many thanks!
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on becoming a bold, positive voice for teachers in a time when teacher bashing has become a national pastime.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your article about your first week teaching in a non-title 1 school. There is so much truth, I am finishing year 5 and I have a new job in the Fall teaching English @ a non-title 1 school. It's no myth that the educational system is broken, and throwing $$ to "fix" the achievement gap is not the solution.
ReplyDeleteHello everyone, I must start by saying that I didn’t go into marriage with expectation that it will fail after 8 years. I and my spouse where not compassionate to ourselves. Trying to work out my marriage was self-defeating, we don’t really know why we no longer find ourselves attractive anymore. All we secretly thought was divorce, we couldn’t agree or communicate anymore, it was emotionally difficult moments when we face each other in the bedroom.
ReplyDeleteI know that a phycologist might not be able to help me go through divorce because it has never worked for me. Divorcing could traumatize our kids, I can’t let them be emotionally crippled.
I remember my grandmother once told me that not issues can be resolved physically, I should try solving some issues spiritually through a well-known spiritual doctor.
I can provide evidence that my life and marriage got more better and interesting with so much love and fulfilled promises after Dr. Wakina lighted up our fire with a magnificent love spell with the aid of dr.wakinalovetemple@gmail.com.
The spell work I never regarded rewrote my story. I’m touched beyond words, thanks Dr. Wakina.