Introduction

When I was in my education classes in college, one of my professors suggested that a good way to deal with the difficulties of the first couple years of teaching was to keep a journal or diary of our experiences. At the time I thought it was a great idea. Then reality hit. In my first teaching position I only had 80 some students, but I was responsible for teaching all four levels of English and in my second year I also adopted drama program responsibilities. Oh yeah, and I was a newlywed with a husband who was frequently frustrated by my mental and physical absences. When did I have time to write about my experiences?

But I wish I had. I wish I had recorded the difficulties, triumphs, failures, tears, joys, every up and down of those first years. They were years that formed the teacher that I am today, but I believe that I would have really benefited from constant reflection on what I was doing and what was working and what wasn't. And I wish that I had those reflections for me to look at eleven years later to see just how far I have come as a teacher.

Hence the reason for this new blog. For those of you who follow my personal blog (found here), I will not stop writing there. Instead, that will continue to be my personal blog in which I hope to continue writing on a regular basis. This blog is my daily experiment. The ultimate goal? To write daily (180 days) about the triumphs of teaching. Are there failures? Absolutely. But my goal here is to focus on the positive. I want to focus on the lessons that I learn every day from my students, my colleagues, and my own experiences. Some days I'm sure I will write a lot more than others. Some days I may be tempted to rant and give in. But ultimately I want this to be about the good stuff.

So to my teacher friends: Enjoy! Let this be a chance for you to see that you are not alone. Share your similar stories. When it seems like there isn't a positive to a situation, offer a positive angle. To my non-teacher friends: If you really are interested in what I have to say, awesome. I welcome you into my classroom.

And now to Day 1. Let the experiment begin...