I currently teach high school English, and I imagine this blog as another place in which my ongoing education will occur. 

My formal education has taken me from parochial schools in Cleveland, Ohio to both public and private universities. In what feels like a prior life, I earned a PhD in philosophy, writing a dissertation titled “Practical Reason and Kant’s Historical Hope.” I also taught philosophy at community colleges for several years. In fact, my first teaching position required me, in my early twenties, to figure out how to teach philosophy to adult learners who sometimes were twice my age. I think it was good not to have the benefit of the power imbalance of high school teaching in my first teaching job. I probably learned the most about teaching when teaching autistic children for a year. When you cannot assume anything, you have to be intentional about every move you make as a teacher.

Just as the book-lined seminar room of a graduate seminar on Plato, the flourescent-lit community college classroom at night, and the sparse room of one-to-one teaching with an autistic child shaped my learning, so I am interested to find out how this blog space contributes to my education.