aardent lore

I never know what to say about myself. My life, in short, can simply be described as average.

I was raised in a military family. Dad’s a retired U.S. Marine Corp gunny turned public school teacher/administrator. Mom worked outside the home as an office manager to supplement the meager income Dad earned as a teacher (his starting pay was $7000 a year). She retired when Dad started earning the big bucks as a district administrator. I grew up alongside one older sister and two younger brothers. My childhood was no more or no less dysfunctional than the rest of the baby boomer generation into which I’d been born.

Recalling my school years dredges up only blurred memories. My teachers were, for the most part, worth forgetting, as were most of my classmates. Frankly, I was an outsider. I loved (still love) learning. I hated (still hate) schooling. My distaste for schooling was so intense that I blew off a college scholarship to become a homeless drifter for most of my young adult life. I was twenty-nine, married to a loser and pregnant with my second child before awakening from that nightmare.

The universe loves irony. While divorcing my Jerry Springer reject of a husband, I also set about divorcing myself from the dull doormat of a woman I’d become. I knew that a personality makeover would involve going back to school, but felt that I was ready to take on college on my own terms. I sifted through the crap and learned what I wanted to learn.

The path that led me to teaching was born out of necessity. The “experts” at my daughter’s elementary school informed me that she was learning disabled, and in need of “special” education services. After my first meeting with the staffing team, I switched my major to special education. I didn’t like the sound of what they were planning to do to my daughter; I needed to know more than they did in order to protect her.

After eight years of teaching special education classes, I realized what a waste of time and resources these programs really are. The children I taught needed good teachers, not “special” ones. I jumped ship and landed in the general education classroom. Now, I teach reading and language arts to students who hate schooling just as much as I do. This blog serves to record my successes and failures as I struggle to become a good teacher.