Melissa Wantz: Notes from West Egg

Who am I to assert my voice into the blogosphere? That’s the first question that comes to mind as I try to set the scene, try to answer the who-what-why-when-where questions that will help to shape a context by which others can fully understand me. I have not written for an audience in 10 years, and it feels a little strange to be picking up this hat again: familiar to think aloud and share and communicate and get it down in print, yes, but paperless? And to an infinite, international, timeless audience of (insert number that increases exponentially here). 

Who are you, reading this, anyhow? I try to picture you — are you sitting cross-legged in your yoga clothes on summer vacation like I am? Are you the only one awake still in your silent house, computer screen glowing and a cat on your lap? Are you on a train? It seems odd, this projection of self, nothing like my newspaper days when I believed, I don’t know, that the audience was somehow more common, Everyman-like, knowable. But you, you might be an expert in blogs, technology, schools, teaching or this Web 2.0 experiment. You might have been blogging for years.  It seems odd to write to/for you. But I guess teaching middle school has prepared me for odd undertakings, and I’ve learned to run with it. 

And I’m moving up to high school this year, to a school that has an excellent reputation for academics and that was created to make using technology a priority. The word technology is in the school’s name even, which goes to show that they were serious eight years ago when they founded it. I have wanted to teach at this school from the beginning, but I wanted to send my two children there even more and they did not want mom around, so I put the idea on the shelf. Last month my daughter graduated and the coast became clear. I’ve been hired — the only new hire for next year (gulp!) — as a 10th grade English teacher… six periods of English, emphasis on world literature. Now the fun begins.