Thinking About You and Thanking You for the Gift of Your Readership

You, who open my posts and read them, inspire me to keep writing even when I’m not really feeling like it, when I’m feeling crushed by the weight of the fear and trembling I feel for teachers and learners especially now, when I’m not always encouraging teachers or offering helpful teaching advice but running my mouth as if I’m sure I know something worth your attention.

Believe me, I doubt myself much more than I let on. Who am I to try to rebuild the system at this late date? I’m thankful and hopeful you seem to understand it’s just my take, not the take, not even close. But I’m obligated to offer it I believe by the privilege of having been provided teachers, professors, and mentors who went the extra mile for me. In hindsight I see that miracles do happen.

If all of us are open to different perspectives, if each of us makes our perspective clear in our spheres of influence, if we understand that individuals who claim to have certain knowledge of knowledge live in a fantasy world, not a scientific one, we can do better with the system. The hallmark of a scientist is respect for fallibility. You would not read my stuff if you didn’t share this respect with me. I’m thankful for that.

Paying my debt to my own public school, community college, and university teachers has become a big deal to me. They had other ideas for me when I was young than working at the Borg Warner factory across the river rebuilding clutches for cars, which would have put food on the table, not that I’m above such work—paying my debt wouldn’t be possible without you sharing your time and energy in textual space. My life as it has turned out I owe to the generosity of spirit of my teachers. This journal is a labor of love, requited by you.

You give assurance that someone like me in the future born in a backwoods into a family of 13 children, not special, destined for nothing in particular, not rare, can offer an opinion about teaching children and their teachers, or an interpretation of scientific research, and add a tiny fraction—.0001—to the possibility of humanizing schools for all kids as it was for me in the tiny town a mile away from the holler, the creek, and the poverty. I am thankful for that.

I’m wishing you a blessed and lovely Thanksgiving! May we together reach for rebuilding all the playgrounds and classrooms for all the children in the world here and yet to be born.