Melissa Wantz: Notes from West Egg

I checked out for 11 months. I thought I could blog and start teaching at a new school, but I couldn’t manage it. I needed to save my creative energy to use in the classroom, and there never seemed to be enough time for reflection. I only wanted to read, learn, experiment, plan and do it all over again. 

School’s been out now for two days, and after a year of what seriously feels like inventing the wheel, I feel a great need to reflect. It has been an amazingly creative time for me, but I have to admit, it’s been a big adjustment to a new school culture, with the co-workers, the kids, the administration, the policies and the routines that come with change. I’m exhausted, a little irritable during the transition to summer, but also deeply satisfied. 

I’m going to set a goal of blogging every day for a month, well, until July 12 when I leave for an ASNE Journalism Fellowship in Columbia, MO. The two weeks there are supposedly intense and will likely cut into my blogging time. 

Topics to come:

• Ning experiences (did I like it more than my kids?)
• Wiki (ditto)
• The online survey I had my students take at the end of the year (not sure I wanted to know all that)
• Sophomores (teaching them, understanding them?)
• World Lit (assignments that worked, those that didn’t, brainstorming for next year)
• Journalism (the class I’ll start in the fall, the book my kids published this year)
• Teaching (why unions need to be weakened but not destroyed in order to save our profession)
• International collaboration efforts (what I want to do next year)

Photo credit: “Blue Day Moon” by Jon Matthews