I left on foot from our volunteer house at 7:45AM with a CSDS guide and an 18-year-old female volunteer from Scotland. The CSDS guide, Julian, quickly veered off the main rode I was accustomed to and headed into a side alleyway no wider than a motor scooter. We walked for a half mile through these …
Continue reading "First day teaching in an unknown Vietnamese village"For the past two years, I have been searching for my next “Thailand teaching adventure”. We are all well aware, the COVID pandemic pushed the pause button on mine and everyone else’s travel plans. Instead of feeling depressed or sorry for myself, this global catastrophe made me even more focused and goal orientated on finding …
Continue reading "Plan My Gap Year (PMGY)"Critical Teaching Question: What do you do if you see one (or more) of your 10th grade students inside of Victoria’s Secret while shopping for your wife’s birthday present? Response: I never thought I would have to answer the above listed critical teaching question until it happened to me. Student-teaching, discussions with peers, the induction process, …
Continue reading "A life lesson learned through a trip to Victoria’s Secret"Teaching can be a soul wrenching existence. Not the most positive way to start a blog post, but this 2021-2022 school year has been like a school yard see-saw. On one side sits the plethora of blissful moments and on the other, the dark abyss of negative interactions. The negative parent and student interactions seem …
Continue reading "A Teacher’s socio-emotional journey"I started teaching in the classroom again. There is a caveat; it’s two days a week, but it’s better than nothing. The process began with my supervisor asking if I was willing to teach a small cohort of 10 to 12 English Language Development students. I also teach 9th grade and 10th grade English Language …
Continue reading "Back Teaching"Hi John…I know you’re looking down, “chuckling to yourself”, watching my tears wet the keyboard as memories flood my conscious flow. I just found out you’re no longer here with us, and I’m heartbroken. There are no words to capture what I truly feel. A hole opened in my heart when I heard about your …
Continue reading "I will miss you John Lowry…"I have been struggling to sit down and write. The words gathering in my head seem to stick like honey-sweet, sticky, and sickening. Robert Frost and Rudyard Kipling speak from the grave reverberating truth from a bygone era. “Two divergent roads” screams Frost. “If you can keep your head” whispers Kipling. Will I look back …
Continue reading "Where there’s smoke, there’s fire…"Lately I have been daydreaming for long periods of time, lost in the doll drums of foggy memories: dining indoors enjoying lively music-drinking a beer from a frosty pint glass while hearing snippets of interesting conversations, enjoying the freedom of choosing a hobby to pursue (pool, a movie, bowling, and the list goes on), entering …
Continue reading "Localized School Petri Dish"From August to the end of December 2019 (Monday through Friday) you can find me in a high school English Language Arts classroom learning the craft of teaching under the tutelage of master-teachers who have honed their techniques through decades of trial and error. There are definitely moments where I question if I have the …
Continue reading "90 Days (Part 2) — Bridging the Great Divide"I just added a Media Gallery link at the top of the page that has a large collection of photographs all in one place from my time in Thailand. Enjoy. A long lost (well maybe not exactly lost, knowing him he was probably waiting for me) good friend of my mine kindly and gently informed …
Continue reading "I blame my behavior on Dead Poets Society"