I Know I've Been MIA
But I'm back, at least for a few months
It’s been a school year.
Not a bad school year. In fact, there have been elements of the past 10 months that have been simply amazing. I learned a lot about myself and grew as a teacher when I stepped back into an English 10 classroom two times a day. I have an amazing new Dual Credit Composition co-teacher who helped me take a curriculum I designed that I really liked, into a curriculum I love, one that I feel prepares the 150-200 students in our academic care for both college and productive citizenship. I loved my new classroom, and after five years of healing, I finally feel like myself again.
But I was crawling to the finish line.
For the first time in several years, I was bringing work home, but I rarely had the time or energy to work on it because three 8th-grade sports for our son (who also filled in the gaps with additional basketball and then flag football) and slightly higher stakes for show choir for our daughter meant parenthood often butted up right against teacher life. The teenage years right now are the best and worst, sometimes at the exact same time. I’m trying to soak up every single moment I can.
And that is why I wrote so little this year, especially as I got into the second semester. Writing, which has so often been a necessary outlet for me over the last 15 years, suddenly became a chore. I had the ideas, but I didn’t have the mental energy to write anything of substance. I would jot down thoughts, but they are currently sitting in a drafts folder here in my Substack or in my Google Drive. I definitely had opinions about the world unfolding around us, but like many, the weight has often been too much, and even taking the time to write about those concerns seemed like too much of a burden to bear at the time
But as of 8:15 this morning, I am finished with my official duties for the school year. I will need to make a few stops in my classroom over the following week to straighten things up and grab some more papers for recycling, and I have an Early College Summit to attend this week, but otherwise, the fog from my brain is slowly starting to clear.
So I will finish that last post about our spring break trip to Tennessee. I will share my complicated views on AI. I will present my American 250 wishlist. I will write about our family vacation to northern Michigan. I will keep reflecting in my Shifting Sand series. I will add lesson plans and posts to my teaching Substack, Styf Teaches English. I will write about everything in between. And because it is summer, I will post when I can, as I can, and I won’t worry about a schedule because summer is for unscheduled activities (says the mom whose son has a packed schedule for the month of June).
And maybe I’ll finally finish writing my book about being a Midwesterner living in Texas. The last time I was actually able to meet with my local library writing group, they gave me some good ideas for new directions, and I think I’m going to go with them.
I’m back, baby, at least for a little while.
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