I want to share two quotes from a past blog. I’m going back to 1426, which was published April 1st, 2014. Not your typical April Fool’s stuff, but it had a few things in there I think resonate for me even now.
This story is about understanding something I’ve only recently realized: Opportunities arrive throughout life. There is nothing that says we are hopeless and ruined if things don’t happen for us right away.
Talislegger 1426
This first quote (note: I figured out how to use quotes in this thing!) hits me now in a way that reminds me that I still possess patience. 2014 was a tough year on a number of levels. I won’t go into those details, but I was struggling with relationships and being a dad and trying to be a good teacher and a good coach and really shifting my focus to the things I felt I could control. Every once in a while a light would turn on and remind me that I still have people who respect and even appreciate my work. I still work for those people a decade later, producing solid fiction.
The job of a teacher cannot merely be to deliver content. A book can do that. The job of a teacher is to help the student interpret and apply content to their specific situation first and to a global perspective secondarily.
Talislegger 1426
I teach three days a week in person this semester and each class is severely different than the one that came before it. I stopped using textbooks. I don’t see the value in them just reading content and not being guided to understanding by me. I teach creative writing and english and game studies and mythology. I don’t teach memorization fields like science or the social sciences where the textbook is extremely needed. I try to turn my space into an enjoyable and memorable experience where the content is learned because they are engaged and want to learn en route to being successful.