Middle-aged Maverick

Tag: education

  • Teachable Moment #3

    I’m counting down the most memorable moments from my teaching career leading up to the one year anniversary of the day I moved on from my life as an educator. Number 3 is all about Annie. No quotation marks this time. Annie really was her name. Though to be honest, Annie was a turtle. And… →

  • Teachable Moment #1

    I appreciate this prompt today. I actually had a thought last night and this prompt is the perfect opportunity for what I was thinking about writing. We are halfway through June and on the 30th, it will be exactly one year since my last official day as an employee at my old job. I thought… →

  • But do you want to?

    Are you a leader or a follower? Am I a leader or a follower? I think the question should really be, do I want to be a leader or a follower? Because at this point in my life, I am perfectly content being a follower. Someone please just tell me what to do and I… →

  • Despite it all…I’m proud

    Several years ago when I taught 5th grade at a Catholic school, we had a part-time P.E. teacher that floated between our school and the other Catholic school in town. Early in the fall one school year, she mentioned to me that the librarian at the other school wanted her to ask me if I… →

  • Will Everything Be Worth It In the End?

    I saw that on the back of a t-shirt today. It was worn by a teenage boy. It struck me in how profound that question is. When we get to the end of our lives, will we look back and agree that everything we did and how we lived was worth it? For context, I… →

  • Peace

    Describe a risk you took that you do not regret. It always tickled me last year when I made it public that I was leaving my job as principal. So many people asked me where I was going next and what I was going to do. I told them the truth by answering “I don’t… →

  • Must Be Willing To…

    What makes you nervous? Nervousness and anxiety go hand-in-hand for me. The primary things that make me nervous/anxious are criticism and confrontation. When I was a school principal, both of those things were daily encounters and bottom line, it sucked. At the start of my last semester in grad school last year, this was displayed… →

  • The Unchallenged

    What is the biggest challenge you will face in the next six months? The great thing about this new life of mine…a life post-grad school, post-stressful career is that I don’t know what my biggest challenge will be in the next six months. While I was in grad school, the challenge was my internship, or… →

  • Purchasing My Future

    If I’m restricted to an actual physical item that was the most expensive I’ve ever purchased, it’s actually hard to answer. I’ve bought things that are several hundred dollars for either myself or my husband. None of them are really memorable though. I can’t even tell what the most expensive was. Maybe the PlayStation 4… →

  • Back to School Season for a Former Teacher

    For the entirety of my school-attending life, and especially for the past 19 years as a teacher and most recently, school principal, August has been the most dreaded month of the year. As an educator, August means that summer vacation is over and it’s time to start another school year. This is especially true for… →