I am away from the classroom, so I don’t have my captive audience, the people who had to listen to me, or at least pretend to. I tried hard to not be a teacher who was alienating or direct by tunnel vision, I designed activities and an environment to engage students with their own thinking, as well as that of their peers; but nonetheless I got to say what I needed to say. This blog was born of the frustration that the confines of the classroom, the absolutely political nature of public education, had a chilling effect, perhaps appropriately so, but an outlet was still needed.

Now without my classroom, without my title, without my audience, and my attempt here to become a writer who is read, a thinker who is heard, a person beyond an institution, I need to become more accessible. It reminds me of the realization I had my senior year of high school, where after years of brooding about how my classmates didn’t like me, a few quick conversations and self awareness finally clued me in that it had been my own judgements that had alienated me.

But now I need to invite in an audience, allow parts of me to be unseen that are not varnished, planned, or according to some State standards. If I want my writing to become successful, I have to leave the doors and windows open. One of the writing communities I am participating in keeps asking for the me, as the narrator of the piece, to share more of my motivation, inner struggles and revelations. Hell that shit has been buried long ago, so let the digging begin.