This year has been a personal and professional struggle. It is interesting being in this stage of my educational journey. I realized recently that I have about a decade left before retirement from the day to day work world. After completing my doctorate, I thought I would have a clear path as to my next steps in my educational career. It appears that is not the case. I spent this year stalled on writing the book that I worked so hard to begin. I questioned whether the direction my work was taking me was true to my interests and professional goals. I felt many times like a fish out of water, not knowing how to take on a new leadership role, hiding my insecurities because the learning curve was steeper than I anticipated. I made mistakes, I owned them, and I learned. But the biggest conflict for me this year has been the age-old question, what do I want to be when I grow up? I have taken time for a significant amount of reflection, contemplating what I want to do, what brings me joy, and what can make the greatest impact in my field in the time I have left.
It’s the end of my thirty-first year in education. What I know to be true is this, I am that educator that ensures students know they have a voice, they are seen, they are heard, they are respected and they will be challenged to be the best version of themselves. The work in our Independent Study program challenged me to look at educational paths in a new way. I had to let go of my traditional teaching methods and recognize that every student we work with has their own learning trajectory, and my role was to coach them to their next steps. Together we learned lessons in patience and perseverance. I was humbled by their willingness to share their stories, and I learned to listen more than speak, and for that, I will be forever grateful.
I want to inspire other educators to commit to those same ideals, and to support them in creating spaces that foster student equity and academically rigorous spaces. But what will make the greatest impact in reaching that goal?
I struggle with my desire to lead on a broader scale, leading a school or perhaps a district or county program. With my experience in teaching and learning, I have been encouraged to take on more administrative roles. I have the credentials to do so, I have the experience to lead in that arena, and yet every time I have left the direct student connection of the classroom in my career, I find myself coming back, to working directly with students, to creating writing and reading spaces that support equity and student voice one student, one class at a time. Is this work I do replicable in a larger arena? Perhaps. What that looks like is still unclear, but lately the vision is becoming more focused.
This year I partnered with some amazing National Writing Project fellows across the nation. We are working together to create some digital spaces that connect students from different backgrounds, and to give students a place to share their ideas on broader platforms. It is messy, it was a lot of false starts and experimentation, and yet that potential for what I feel could be great lies before us. Over the next month, I will be curating some of the work, pulling together what we tried in our program and share the results with others. I will be sharing it here with links to other spaces in hopes to figure out a way to encourage others to take this journey with us. This work with Paul Allison and Paul Hankins has pushed me to new levels of what it means to collaborate and pursue excellence. They continue to be generous with their time and willing to share ideas, and for that, I am eternally grateful. So here’s to roads not yet taken, and to journeys found with friends you meet along the way.