In the beginning I was pretty lost, flailing around day to day. Sometimes minute to minute. As time went on I got better and I became one of the teachers other colleagues could depend on for help. And every once in a while as we talked, one of us would forget to breathe, or begin to cry, or fight to hold it in, or just start shaking with frustration, and then someone would say some version of “How do you do it?"

The first time I was on the receiving end of that question I had only been on the job for a year and a half myself, so instead of listening, I talked. I told the other teacher that I tried to get to bed early and eat well and not drink too much--all good tips, by the way--but they practically rolled their eyes at me. The next day I asked a veteran teacher how they would have answered. “I just tell them, ‘Only you can answer that question.’  That usually works.”

Well, “Only you can answer that question” is a bullshit answer and teachers use it all the time. It almost never helps and in this case it’s not even true. Nobody can answer it. Certainly not the person who just arrived on another planet and doesn’t even know yet what the “it” is. And my own bullshit answer had been meaningless because I hadn’t even really heard the question. They were not asking about me. They wanted to know how they could do it. They wanted to know if they would ever be able to do it. 

If you are one of those teachers, if you are asking Am I the only person seeing this? Thinking this? Going through this? Am I the only one who thinks this is wrong? This is a place for answers. Here they are:

NO. You are NOT the only one. You are not crazy. What you are going through is real and it's bad. However, you can do this. You can survive the game, sustain a long and wondrous career. There are real strategies for navigating this corrosive system while holding on to your health and humanity. You can. Do this.

And who knows? Just maybe we can change things along the way. This blog is one part of an urgent and ongoing conversation about how we save schooling and ourselves.

Maybe you've heard it all before. I get that. So had I. So what makes this book and this blog (and me) any different? I retired this year, in a pandemic, while I was still pretty good. I owe nothing to anyone (except all the people I’ve learned from) and I have no fear. I can tell the truth. If we work together, maybe we all can.