I'm not sure where this road is leading . . .

. . . but it's paved with good intentions.

Here are the basics. I'm a dad, a big brother, a son, a Lutheran, and a teacher. It's that last job title that will be the focus of this blog.

I launch this blog at the end of the toughest calendar year - 2011 - in my career. It was a year of setbacks, both in terms of my own career track and in terms of what I see at work in this profession. I spent enough time stewing in 2011, and I resolve to do something, make that some things, more constructive in 2012.

Some basics about me.

Board policies preclude me from divulging my name or school. I'm a teacher. I have been for more than a dozen years.

I teach high school Social Studies, splitting my time between economics and history.

I have awesome students. That has been typical of my career.

I have some very good friends on a faculty that is filled with stellar teachers.

I would like to settle upon the pseudonym Andrew Johnson High School for where I work. I tried Franklin Pierce H.S. figuring that there was no way a district named itself after America's worst president, but I was wrong. However, I couldn't find any who named themselves after our second worst.

AJHS is in an affluent suburb on the East coast.

A final note for this evening: though children are frustrating at times, they are wonderful. This will not be a blog in which I demean the kids I'm fortunate enough to teach. I give myself the right to poke fun at adolescence, but will not demean the adolescents I see in my room and in the hallway. I ask the readers of this blog to hold me accountable if I fail to do just that.

In fact, it's for them that I write this. No, not that I intend for my students to read this. I hope that this blog helps me articulate a coherent guiding principle for what I'm doing for them. In 2011 I learned that a lot of the values I had believed guided professional life at AJHS no longer exist. And teachers like me need to figure out how to persist at elevating our kids' mind and soul despite crosswinds that are formidable and withering.

So, I don't know where this road (blog, career path, the next day's lesson plan) is leading, but it's paved with good intentions.