Teaching In The 408: Author's Index

It's a strange thing, to posthumously reflect upon and involve yourself in a blog – this undertaking that chronicled an unparalleled, unequaled period of my life. It's a strange thing to have those thoughts and ideas existing outside of your direct focus and control, and outside really, what's happening now. You read something and it comes echoing a little out of the past, this person you used to be, this life you used to live. But don't anymore.

And still, folks find their way here, now, in the post-departure period, and maybe it is unclear what this place represented and why some found it special. The thematically categorized links below are an attempt to close that gap, an index and a primer, as well as a response to blogger's poor navigational tools, and an attempt to address my tendency to intersperse high-level writings and intensely held beliefs with reflections on grading while hungover, which captured the attention of a particular US News & World Report journalist, but probably isn't terribly representative of this body of work as a whole.

Thank you for reading, both now and in the time before.

Metaphysical first principles for teaching and learning
∆ Three ways to build professionalism
∆ Rhetoric aside, this is why many of the best of us are leaving
∆ What the achievement gap is not
∆ What's worth caring about; why it's hard

NCLB, merit pay, and other things union reps aren't supposed to support
∆ A primer on merit pay
∆ A primer on NCLB
∆ False dichotomies: The ways NCLB does and does not affect our work

English Language Learners and their discontents
∆ How we set up ELL kids for failure
∆ Why Ana succeeds where Jorge fails
∆ Leveling the field and ensuring success for the Jorges

Tainted love: TFA and me
∆ TFA's (lack of) commitment to teaching as transformational force
∆ How that lack of commitment becomes enshrined as something great
∆ I repeat these ideas in print, forever alientating the Bay Area Executive Director

Those four walls
∆ I had more fun teaching grammar than should be allowed by law
∆ Maybe gangs aren't what we've been thinking
∆ My super-secret classroom management approach
∆ The end of this work, and its beginnings
∆ A lot of weeks went a lot like this
∆ There is inexplicable tragedy to teaching and we fall short often
∆ Happy trails, POY... and thanks
∆ My own departure triology: announcement, why and not-why