Since I officially retired on July 1, I have been reviewing my old blog entries because I am not yet certain how to re-vision Metawriting. Add that question to the pile of questions that remain to be answered about my future as I allow myself the privilege of at least a season of rest and recovery from the trauma of 25 years of full-time teaching. So much to unpack in that one sentence, but I want to start simple with my featured image choice. I narrowed my choice down to the featured image (above) by congerdesign or the image below by StockSnap because I wanted to offer a visual of what working in education feels like for teachers (based on my personal experience and many conversations with others). I mulled over the stacked apple slices for a long time because every teacher I know is sliced up in multiple ways by the system, but in my mind these slices are too neatly stacked. There should be less balance and more (thinner) slices. That is why I ultimately landed on the peeled and chunked apples in the bowl. That felt more accurate. We have all been skinned and cored and divided. Some of us do not survive the process.
I have written numerous blog posts about being stressed, broken, or lost and drowning as well as many blog posts about self care, but the truth is that there is not enough self care to help teachers today. As part of my retirement deal I taught a reduced load in the spring and even now that I am well into summer and my retirement has officially begun, I am still raw and burned. I have written about finding joy (in writing in particular) and refuge and renewal as well as yoga. I have chosen one little word mantras to guide me (fixing, create, and zest to name the most recent). I have written about making my classes more humane and full of grace as well as the fact that less can be more. In recent years, as the good ship education was breaking up and sinking, I have found my way to my teaching sweet spot and at the very least do no harm to my students. Left to my own timeline I would have taught at least one more semester if not more because I truly love teaching developing writers — especially first year writers. There is something very special about being part of this transformative period in the lives of so many young people especially when we share the bonds that only a community of writers can share (see The Last Class).
Sometimes I think about how I can create that community in other contexts. I greatly miss that regular interaction with young people. Other times I think about how I can support the teachers and students who have also been stressed, broken, or drowned by what the public education system has become after politics and techbros have been wreaking unchecked havoc for decades. I believe in public education. I am the product of public education and I sent my son to public schools (K-12 and higher ed). I believe that state university systems are one of the greatest public goods we have wrought as a nation and every day that we undermine and diminish that legacy my heart breaks anew. But I also know that every year the number of students and teachers harmed by public education in its current twisted form increases exponentially. The entire system (P-16) is so broken I do not even know how it can be fixed and reclaimed for the public good it once was and I believe can be again, but I think a good first step would be to stop breaking teachers. No one enters teaching today thinking it will be a cushy gig (at least not if they completed a traditional teacher education program with field and student teaching under their belts) but even so over the course of my career the rates of teachers leaving the profession has increased by more than 50%. High teacher turnover impacts teachers and students alike. In recent years I have grown more worried about what happens when all the teachers retire who were educated before testing and technology transformed education for the worst.
One of my core truths remains rock solid: I am a writing evangelist although I have been thinking recently about shifting that title to writing ambassador here in my third act. I have always told my students that we need more writers and their first year writing classes are essential to their success as learners and humans. I believe this more strongly now than I did when I started. Good writing is magic not alchemy. I also know as a lifelong writer and a longtime National Writing Project teacher leader that you can’t teach the writing process because writing is not one thing and literacy is not as simple as just reading and writing (see purpose of literacy and 10 lessons for teachers). My entire teaching career I have known that passion matters and much of my teaching success has been due to passion-based writing pedagogy (or project-based learning in the writing classroom). But most of all I have known that we need to stop teaching writing and instead focus on the writer.
In answer to my titular question, I have zero faith in the current broken machinery of education (and the humans that engineer it and protect it) to stop breaking teachers. That is one of the reasons that I decided to retire at the first offer/opportunity instead of waiting for the time optimal for my family and personal timeline. I do believe the pendulum will swing in my lifetime, but I do not have the energy (or fucks) available to wait it out. I hope that my advice/experience will help some educators not only survive through these times of tribulation but also thrive.
During this season of rest and renewal and recovery after 25 years of full-time teaching and 40 years bearing capitalism’s yoke, I am contemplating what will come next for this blog (feel free to weigh in with your thoughts!). Part of that contemplation is looking back on where I have been as a human (learner/writer), teacher (living that teacher life as well as lessons I have loved), and member of a community of writers. I have highlighted in this post a number of meaningful posts that fall under the heading of living and learning as a human and writer, but I will wrap up with a list of my nine personal favorites:
- Lost or drowning? Rereading this makes me feel weird about listing it as a favorite, but it conveys a lot of powerful ideas and I have no notes now that I’m on the other side and I know I will never have to survive another fall semester like that. I should note that once I had things in hand I was at the top of my game as a teacher and I still managed to create a great relationship with most members of my writing communities.
- Where do you find refuge? I did consider going with one of my posts about joy or possibly yoga, but this post about finding refuge, solace, and respite continues to speak to me and thinking about this question continues to inform my life choices.
- Fixing Me in 2026 When it came to one little words I have often been very pleased with choice long after the fact, but right now Fixing continues to exert a powerful hold on my imagination and my life.
- Teaching Humans My teaching and my life got better when I made this my mantra. One of my early lessons as a baby teacher was the simple fact that student shaming is bad for you and as long as I have held that closely in one fist and focused on humanity with the other I have made better choices as both a teacher and a human.
- Teaching Toward the Sweet Spot Maybe it’s recency bias, maybe it is the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, but some of my happiest moments were when I was in the classroom writing with my students and the door closing out the world (and administration). My students would often agree with this sentiment in their final reflections. My hope is that more teachers and more students can find such sweet spots in their education journeys.
- I Am A Writing Evangelist While I continue to equivocate over the choice of “evangelist” (could it be ambassador?), I believe this even more than I did more than a decade ago. What is more I carefully refined my teaching praxis to make many of my students activists too.
- Good Writing is Magic Not Alchemy I have written many blog posts over the years about the formulas and rigid rules and disposable assignments that have plagued and derailed developing writers over the decades but this is my favorite.
- Passion Matters Probably because I was a working writer before I was a writing teacher, but authentic writing has always been important to me. I also suspect my own undiagnosed ADHD is a powerful reason for my long advocacy of student agency and choice. Whatever the reason(s), I know that giving my students choice and showing them how their writing can have real world impact on issues important to them made a difference in student learning and engagement.
- Believe the Writer Over and over student reflections would note that the writer did not believe they could write or be a writer until I encouraged them to do so. That is my proudest legacy as both a human and an educator. As I note in this post: “One of the greatest gifts is reading in students’ reflections that they believe they are writers because I believed in them first.”
Featured Image by congerdesign from Pixabay
