Update a long time coming...

Haven't been keeping up here, which is sort of a shame... So, details on what's changed in my life as a professional educator: At the beginning of the 2009-2010 school year, I started teaching environmental science for the first time (finally! science!) It was a hell of a challenge, both because I had a few behaviorally challenging groups of freshmen, and because I was making up the curriculum as I went (often literally, from week to week...) That, and the fact that I was really feeling disconnected from my AP Calculus students (burning out on *their* low motivation to succeed at calculus) were, more than I'm generally comfortable admitting, part of my decision to leave the classroom in January: see, back in November, I applied for and then was offered a job as a program manager, helping (along with one other program manager) to run the district's National Board Certification program.

Yes, for a little while there, I let it get too hard for me, and that's part of what led me to bail on teaching. Of course, the fact that the opportunity looked both prestigious and interesting was a big part of it, too. I recently saw someone, offering job-choosing advice to a third party, write that "a useful heuristic is to do the thing that the fewest number of people have the opportunity to do..." and this definitely fits that category. At the same time, I *do* have a passion for what National Board Certification is and what it can do for teaching, and so I thought that this job would be something that I'd be able to passionately and vigorously pursue, and be excited about on a daily basis.

But, as it turns out, my heart really is in the classroom. I'm casually looking for teaching jobs, again-- but I'm in a position where it makes sense for me to be picky. I'm not desperate to leave this job, but I am eager to get back to doing what I feel good about...

Mind you, a big part of why I'm motivated to (finally) update with this post right now has to do with my inability to deal with my co-worker. I might post more about the lousy interpersonal dynamics there, later, but for now, I'll just note that I worry a bit that I'm looking at returning to the classroom as just an opportunity to run... to run from what's painful and feels like failure right now, in the same way that (to some degree at least) I ran from teaching a year ago.

I don't think I have an answer on that, right now. But I'm looking for teaching jobs, all the same.