Dropped out
I was a 2nd year teacher drop-out. I felt like a failure as a person and as a professional. Most of all, I felt like I had failed my high school science, biology and chemistry students.
It was November and I had been working long days trying to keep up the pace of lesson planning, grading and attempting to maintain some balance in my new professional life as a teacher.
I remember getting many warnings in my college days about the difficulties of being a teacher and especially in the first year, but I overestimated my abilities to keep pace with my own standards of perfectionism.
Burned out
Let’s be honest. I burnt out. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I had to resign half way through the year leaving my students stranded and the high school scrambling to find a replacement. I put my resume out to nearly any job I could find but the market was nearly as grim as my own outlook.
You know what the worst part of it was? I loved education and I loved my students. How would anyone hire me in the field when I resigned from a full-time teaching appointment? I figured I wouldn’t be able to ever work in education again.
Substitute teaching
So I decided to start subbing.
Yes, that’s right, I was a substitute teacher right after quitting a full-time teaching job. Being a substitute teacher is hard enough in and of itself, but being one after being a teacher drop-out is excruciatingly humiliating. But I knew I needed to swallow my pride, focus on my own health first and then re-build myself as a professional from the ground up.
Things I learned
It was difficult times, but I had amazing family, friends and professionals who supported me through the dark night. I wouldn’t wish the circumstances on anyone, but I also wouldn’t trade the lessons I learned at the earliest days of my career for the world.
I was blessed with hard life-lessons on understanding my own limitations, on developing a healthy work-life balance, on understanding myself on a fundamentally human level vs. viewing my own self-worth through the lens of an externally professional reputation.
Still learning
Do I still struggle with these things?
Yes.
Have I arrived?
No.
Am I making any progress?
Every day.
Silver linings
And you know what?
I still am an educator.
Mostly, I get to work every day as a human being helping other people through the difficult and important work of teaching and learning.
*I am forever grateful for the many people in my life who have believed in me even when I haven’t believed in myself. I wouldn’t be here without you and I stand on your shoulders as I do the meaningful work of believing in others around me.
Let’s build a wall in education.
I am proud of being part of 
That is how long I had been wanting to attend a Sloan-C (OLC) conference.
Well, it would have been good if I had only attended the conference on my own, but there were eight of us that were there together who came all the way from East Lansing’s Michigan State University.
One of the highlights of the trip was that I finally was able to meet Michelle Pacansky-Brock (
Between sessions, it was convenient to network and connect with others naturally at the constantly running technology test kitchen which was organized 
Another major highlight was seeing that Dr. Steve Weiland was going to be presenting at the conference on “
One of my favorite go-to blogs that I enjoy tweeting about from time to time is Faculty Focus. There are consistently strong contributions from a variety of disciplines about pedagogy and research-based best practices that are practical for multiple learning environments. There was a post today from Rob Kelly who references Dionne Thorne on the topic of 
This was an interesting article supporting the need for preparing students for online instruction. A noteworthy quote: “Through well-developed orientation courses and other online student support services, we can equip students with no prior experience with the skills to learn online.”