Why This Blog?

I've been thinking of starting this blog for quite some time. A space to talk about teaching "from the trenches" as they say, though I don't like the war metaphor. My enemies are not within the classroom, but without.

I'm calling it "The Practical Pedagogue" because I'm not interested in theory and philosophy. I'm interested in the work, the actual (not hypothetical) children under my care, and making teaching a sustainable endeavor.

I've been a full time public school teacher since 1995. I've taught in a range of schools. From Kenny Lake School in a homesteading community in Alaska (Kenny Lake) which had 100 children grades K-12 and where I taught chorus, drama, and computers in addition to language arts and Spanish to Riverside High School in the urban-for-North-Carolina Durham which had 1800 students grades 9-12 where I taught Spanish I, Spanish II, and Mythology in one of more than twenty trailers added when the student population overflowed the walls of the structure.

I'm pulling from a range of experience.

I've taught where I was in the racial minority and where I was not. I've taught rich kids and poor ones, often at the same time. I've taught sixth graders and adults thirty years my senior and all the ages in between. I've taught courses I was overqualified for and courses I was under-qualified for. I've taught with excellent colleagues and terrifyingly incompetent colleagues. I've taught in schools swimming in resources and schools struggling for basics.

I'm finally starting the blog today, because I'm at school when I should be Raleigh protesting the ignorance and short-sightedness of our lawmakers and their role in the continued attack on public education, to the detriment of our state and our people.

I'm at school instead of protesting because I don't have the leave to take to go, thanks to the flu which took out first my daughter, then me and ate up all the leave I had managed to save. I simply can't afford to take a day unpaid, which ironically is part of what I would be protesting about if I were in Raleigh today.

Like so many things in my life, my being at school today isn't about my politics or my passions, but about what is practical and necessary.

Hold on to your hats, folks. I've got opinions and I'm not afraid to share them.