Renewed.

Well, sorry for the long pause there. I’ve been out and about, upstate, downtown, and all over the place. This past weekend, I went to Bard College, where I and another colleague took part in a writing workshop. It was a small gathering of people, just 12 other teachers and professionals from around the country (indeed as far away as California!) and we spent our time writing and thinking about writing.

I am somewhat of a Professional Development nerd, in that I’ll take whatever comes my way with nowhere near your average teacher groan. Sometimes I’ll fake an eye roll here or there, but for the most part, I look forward to stepping outside of my classroom world and learning something new. This weekend, since it was about writing, I was pretty much in paradise, and not just because of the workshop. I got to stay in a hotel.

There’s something magical about staying in a hotel, in the same way that stopping at a McDonald’s is magical when I’m on the 6-hour drive from NYC to Vermont. It’s a departure from routine and a welcome one. This is not to say that my life in Queens is anywhere near a routine, nor is it needing a break from routine. But I do love to get away and then come back home again, which is something I don’t think I’ve quite gotten over since returning from Brazil. There’s something special about coming home, especially when I get to come home to my best friend and my best cat.

Dennis is nearing the end of his production and these days we rarely see each other. We have such opposite schedules—even on the weekends!—that it’s almost a surprise when we find each other sitting at the table together having a meal, or (this week) even being awake at the same time. He won’t be home until almost midnight tonight, and that’s a full two hours after I’ll have gone to bed. In the morning, there’s no need for him to wake up until after I leave the house at 6:30…and so, there you have it. Like ships passing in the night.

Remember that recent post about how I thought I was changing, standing up for myself, and whatnot? Well, it’s coming even more into fruition. Lately I’ve had a very hard time at work finding my place, my voice, where I fit into the grand scheme of things, in amongst the tradition of this private school. Today I took the first big step and announced at the faculty meeting that I was looking for other teachers who might be willing to open their doors to other teachers, purely voluntarily, purely out of a desire to share teaching. Not in any kind of critical way but instead with the intent to help create an environment that makes teaching at the heart of what we do. I know this is a school, and I know that teaching is (or should be) at the heart of what we do. But these days, I’m just not feeling it. I don’t feel like a teacher and any heart that’s there is beating slowly and faintly. A sleeping heart, if you will.

And so I said, “screw it.” This isn’t just going to change overnight and certainly not without my calling attention to what I need, so, in the spirit of change, in the spirit of standing up for myself, I said I was trying to find teachers who might be open to sharing. I got two responses. But then again, we’d just spent an hour in a faculty meeting in which we learned, via PowerPoint, about e-mail: what it is, how to use it, the challenges of it, and what to avoid. I am not joking and I’ve never wanted to be joking as badly as I do right now. And you ask why I might be feeling confused about the value of teaching in the school. It makes me feel sad to be in a place where passion for teaching, real love and interest IN it, seems hidden. Where we can shout: “We love the kids!” instead of “We love what we do! Come look at what we’re doing and join us!” Shouldn’t we be saying both? I’d be crazy not to say the first thing about this school, but I’m really feeling the absence of the second one. So? Rather than sit and bitch? Do something, right? Right. We’ll see where it takes us.