Written October 14, 2006
Slightly revised June 6, 2014
Minor revision January 19, 2018
A bit more revision October 8, 2021
I’m tired of saying the right thing. I've taken too many bullets for the team. I've been a Pollyanna with my head stuck up my ass… and a visionary that changed lives for the better.
I walked picket lines, exposed evil, compromised my integrity, and given with all my soul. I've ranted across the desks of more than one superintendent and rolled over for others.
I charmed, trashed, ignored, sympathized with, and bullshitted hundreds of parents. I faced surly classes and then flipped them into open-minded learners. I missed as many teachable moments as I caught. I helped some kids gain 4 years on the reading test and ignored others because they were hopeless punks who pissed me off.
I hung around in the computer labs and classrooms weeping with inspiration and happiness for simply being part of the learning environment I dreamed of building,
I hated the deep rut of driving back to school every morning to participate in the systematic destruction of joy and trust that small-minded inane administrators and school board members call education.
I was an American Teacher for 45 years and I’m sick at heart about public education. I want to tear the system down and let the ferrets run free. I want to teach skepticism and critical thinking and create a generation that will fight for their minds and fight for freedom.
But I’m tired of tilting at windmills. I’ve learned to choose my battles. I’m not sure how much fight is left in me.
Sometimes I just want to scream and tell it all. All the good, all the bad, the lunacy and the laughs and everything in between. Instead, I’ll just blog.
I got my credential in 1974 despite a system that kept trying to talk me out of wasting my life in the classroom. All my neurotic friends in the graduate English Department at Berkeley thought I was nuts.
“You’re too good for teaching. Why waste your talent in a classroom?”
The application committee at the CSUN asked me the same thing (after beating me up for misspelling the word professional in my writing sample).
“You don’t want to teach. There’s no money in it. You won't’ be able to get a job, there are too many teachers already.”
But I was stubborn and burned out by the life I’d been leading and looking for direction. Up in Canada, I made a deep woods camp. I spent time on mountain tops and in the wild thinking about it all. It gets old talking to fish and sitting on the high ground with a rifle. Ultimately, you are left with the questions only you can answer…
My career choices came down to law or education. I could be a lawyer or a teacher. I could make a living working with people at their worst or helping kids learn. I chose to teach and despite 45 years of classroom joy and pain, I don’t regret the choice.
