Welcome to my blog....

It occurred to me today that I should decompress after work.  I spend a lot of time thinking about teaching and thinking about my students, so much so that I NEVER feel like I am off the clock.  I hope that by using this blog to reflect on the day, gather my thoughts, and chronicle my successes  and failures, I will better process what is going on inside the classroom.

So a little about myself.....

....  I am now sitting in a large classroom in a tiny school in the heart of the Cascadian foothills.  My school has only 250 kids K-12, about 20 teachers total and a superintendent who is also the principal, vice principle, maintenance coordinator, and math teacher.  Our school is 98% white and predominantly poor.  Despite the lack or racial diversity, we have a fair range of upbringings.  There's the kids who were raised in the middle of mountains and grew up without electricity, to the kids growing up in large ghetto-like trailer parks, to the kids who's parents came from California to escape city life.  The valley where our school is also has a mixture of political ideologies.  There's certainly a large contingency of survivalist conservative families, but there is also a group that stem from the hippy insurgency of the early 70's.  Quite a few of the families came out here to experience communal living. Although most of the original communes have since disbanded, many of these same hippies have stayed to raise their families away from the rest of the world.

All this, makes for an interesting combination of kids, and there is a definite new culture that has been created here.  In many ways it is a fascinating place to be working.  One of the things that fascinates me the most is the many contradictions that you see here.  You have intense poverty, unemployment, drug use, and violence painted  onto a canvas whose background is filled with lush greens, beautiful clear rivers, and the most intense winter sky I've ever encountered.  There's the contrast of the cultures of the old who see this place as a refuge from the liberal evils of the city and the ever present influence of this shunned culture as it seeps into every pore from the outside through t.v., the internet, and outsiders who move in and become part of the community.  It is my students who listen to country and Lady Gaga, who can often be unknowingly racist but dance the Souljah Boi at our school dances.  It is the wealth of knowledge they have about the animals, the rivers, and their trucks placed against their distrust of teachers and their dislike of books.  Then it's the kids who defy all that and just do their thing.  The religious right, and the huge number of teen mothers.  The joy and the pain.  All this can be overwhelming some days, and exciting and beautiful the next.  And although it can a million and one different things, it is never dull....

... welcome to Teaching in the Sticks.  Enjoy your stay, watch out for the cougars!