Life after Baldwin Middle School

 I retired a few years ago, and I was really worried about not having a structure. After all, when you're a secondary English teacher for years and years, you know exactly where you'll be at 11:20 A.M. on a random Thursday. It would seem that a benefit of retiring would be not having that predictable schedule. But I feared the unknown. I also wanted to continue to be involved. I brought home a million files and all the precious books I had purchased, not really knowing what I'd be doing.

In the fall semesters since I've been retired, I have been teaching writing classes at a local community college. I'm also still doing work with our local Writing Project site, housed at that community college. This past fall I supervised student teachers, and I also wound up doing a whole lot of remote tutoring of secondary students.

This semester I'm teaching a remote graduate course called "Teaching Writing and Thinking in the Secondary Schools," a class I'm totally thrilled about. The students are so idealistic, motivated, really smart, and excited to embark on this incredible career. They give me hope for the future. I'm still tutoring a lot, doing Writing Project work, and running a monthly Writing Group.

I began this piece feeling all over the place, somewhat overwhelmed on a Saturday afternoon - spending hours attempting to pull together my 3-hour class plan for Monday, knowing I need to write this blog post and respond to others (I do love that!). But now I'm feeling grateful for the many varied roles I've tried on since having left my middle school job.