I Never Planned on Being Teacher...

To save you time in reading my back story, understand that the function of this blog is to share resources and stories of the trade.

I wasn't a bad kid, but I am definitely the kind of person who has to learn things the hard way. I had many good plans aside from teaching; drive a truck, hop trains, write poems, dig holes, but somehow or another a good woman (who is now my wife) helped me focus and make sense of a life spent devouring books, and the autodidactic learning  that had literally, up until that point, materialized into my working knowledge of the world.
I struggled with the whole system of school. The sitting, the standing, the sitting again; the listening, the completing of assignments, the remembering to put them in the right pocket of the folder, and the receiving of the poor grades that caused so much trouble for me when my mom saw or found them hidden or balled up in the garbage. School to me was like the neighbor's mean pit bull that I always had to outsmart or run past at breakneck speed to avoid altogether.

I didn't know I liked learning when I'd daydream during class and write poems and songs in verse matched to Robert Frost. I didn't know I liked learning when I spent my freshman year of high school skipping class to read "Civil Disobedience".  I didn't know I liked learning when I worked tirelessly to convince my high school guidance counselor into moving me into a remedial reading class that essentially served as a permanent SSR period were I could read whatever I wanted uninterrupted and receive at least one good grade. I didn't know I liked learning at all, but I knew I was a bad kid and an even worse student.
I did have one teacher that may have lit the proverbial spark. My sophomore year of high school I was on the low track and as such I was in the low track composition class. My teacher read my first paper and went to argue with my former teacher about placing me on the low track. When nothing was done she told me I could write anything I wanted all semester and she would give me an "A" so long as my work was in on time. So I did that, and I think I began to sense that learning may have greater potential to be collaborative and shared and enlightening and fun. Either way it took a long time to set in.

Student sketch of me on my first day as a teacher

To make a long story a little less long; after roaming around, working odd jobs, and setting the bar as low as possible, I fell deeply in love, and I saw things in my future like kids and mortgages. I earned an associates in psychology and then meandered into the college of Human Services at SIUC where I was made very nervous by an anxious spiky haired guidance counselor who was scheduling my first semester of  classes. Another, calmer and more confident woman came in and saw me and literally told me I was "in the wrong place" and to "follow her across the hall". Then and there, just moments before finalizing a first semester of unrelated course work that would begin the building of a mountain of student debt, this woman, or fate, plucked me up, led me across the hallway and told me to sign up for a dual certification program where I would gain a degree in special and elementary education. She was nice and made me feel at ease compared to the other woman so I said yes and thus began my teaching career.

Actual photo of me on my first day as teacher

I had intended at first to work with adult populations most likely in prisons, but I got a part-time job tutoring 3rd and 4th graders. It took about five minutes to realize that kids are awesome, and that I would be about 99.9% less likely to be punched in the face or shanked if I stuck with them. I worked hard in college, became a father halfway through my program, graduated, and was offered a job at the same school that I had been tutoring.
It was all a great miracle and seemed to be God's providence until I realized as most teachers do early on, how little I truly knew, and how much better I wanted to be as teacher, for no other reason than to make sure that I subject all these poor kids to the least amount of boredom and educational lethargy possible. I am still very much at the beginning phases of being an inspiration but I am young and have time to learn and grow.
I have now worked in both the general and special education setting. Right now I am 3-4 Resource Room Teacher and Co-Teacher. My endeavor with this page is to share resources that are working for me and how I applied them. I also hope to share some stories about learning, both mine and my students.
Thanks for visiting!