Author: moreteachingmoments

This blog project started as a tool for reflection and healing. I'd taught for over twenty years in a middle school English classroom when I was struck by a stroke, causing a cerebral hemorrhage. My recovery pushed me to consider why I choose to teach and why I needed to return to the classroom. During my rehabilitation, many teacher friends implored, "Why are you going back there? We all want out!" They saw my stroke as as a ticket to freedom, a path to a more humane way of living. Trying to survive as teachers in America was very nearly killing us all, and my colleagues could not comprehend why I would return to this terribly stressful work. They couldn't know how much I'd wanted to be "the teacher." I played school my entire childhood, went right to college, and straight to my first real teaching job. It was all I knew, and I wasn't ready for it to be over. I wanted MORE--more time to live this teaching life.