Why teach? Because magic.

Teaching is magical...and painful, and heart breaking, and stressful and exhausting and life-changing and in some moments, absolutely frustrating. But mostly magic.

There is a thing about teaching that keeps bringing you back. You can't put your fingers on it and you search for that reason while you are sitting at your desk, papers past your ears, way beyond the hours you should work for a healthy lifestyle.

The magic lies in the days with the kids who don't care, whom it seems you will never reach. The same kids who run into you years later and apologize for being that kid and tell you that they never forgot that you never gave up, even when they had. For the kid who refuses to do homework, or show up who you worry about even when they are not even your own child. For the day when they finally come in and ask for help. Even if it is for a few minutes, they came in and cared about something. The magic is in the student that stares at you blankly and questions you on everything and frustrates you because you feel disrespected. You go home at night, still furious when one night you realize, he was asking all the right questions, just in all the wrong ways.

And lastly, the magic is that end of the year moment when you all know it's your last day and you see the heartbreak in your students eyes when they realize they won't see you next year. It's that moment when you unexpectedly reached a kid everyone else had given up on. It's that magical moment that comes at least once a day when one of your students, if not the entire class, teaches you. And together you learn and together you grow and together you create why I teach: magic.

The Identity Campaign #Identity

This class has got me thinking. A lot. Maybe too much. But maybe that’s good.

A professor recently followed my Twitter account. To some, that may elicit a sense of excitement or even pride, knowing a professor you looked up to took an interest in YOUR words.

I had a sense of sheer panic.

My Twitter account, which I pretty much NEVER use is connected to my Instagram account, to which no one follows me so my posts and pictures are, let me just say, what I assumed for my eyes only...to some degree.

Until now.

My digital identity is all over the place. I am professional, albeit sparse, on my LinkedIn, which I never go to until I get an email that someone has been stalking that page, which is usually an ex-boyfriend or people I have no connection with from across the country. I deleted my Facebook account and my blogs haven’t been updated in months, if that. The only thing I had been religious on was my Instagram and that was mostly from boredom, child-like tendencies to excitedly make jokes and say inappropriate things and scroll through my feed which consists of nothing but surfers and surf-like Instas that I follow. I think I personally know only one of the people I follow and they never post, so really, it has become my own little world of just me and strangers who I live vicariously through.

Until now.

My world changed abruptly when I received an email telling me my professor was following my Twitter feed...the same one connected to my Instagram which I am sure has a photo of my ass from when I got raked by a spike in the ground at a slip and slide party which excited me when the bruised gash started to look like the Eye of Mordor. That is my Digital Identity. My ass with the Eye of Mordor on it. That probably isn’t good.

In my panic I raced through my phone, attempting to delete all the posts that were associated with Instagram but soon I felt defeated. Why did I have to hide who I was (physically and personally)? Why did I panic when I realized that a professional might see who I really am, or who I portray myself as, unintentionally, on Instagram. Would this affect my future career? Would my humor and willingness to laugh at myself for my own faults and clumsiness be the things that ruin my chances at a job? Would my past, my modeling, be the other thing? But I don’t want to have to hide my accomplishments, even if they do not fall within the “professional realm”. I hate the idea that I cannot be myself and a professional at the same time. How do I find the right Digital Identity where I can be me, all personalities and “multiple spirits” included?

I wanted to figure out what it was that I wanted to have represent me, but how can I do that if I don’t even know who I am. I mean, I know who I am (wild, weird, open, honest, and willing to put myself out there for the sake of a laugh or whatever and following my dream of being a writer and teacher) but how do I keep honest with myself and yet figure out how I want to represent myself?

This has been frustrating. I hated that part about teaching high school. You could hide all you wanted, but you never knew when someone knew someone on Facebook and any joke I made or photo I took that was in no relation to school or my career could have easily been misconstrued and my career could have been at risk. I joke, I curse, I have fun, I am human. But having this digital identity you can’t really do that and I want to fight that. The idea of “personal censorship” is maddening to me. Who I am in my “hidden” Instagram or my Twitter account that I never use should not be used against me for any reason, but it can be and most likely it would be. And I hate that because who I am in the classroom and my work in my career is in no relation to the “Eye of Mordor” picture I have. Yes, it’s my ass, but it is also my humor and my wit and my creativity and my openness about who I am as a person. Must I fear who I am? The binding ties make me want to scream.

I wanted to start a campaign for finding ones own digital identity. No more shame for being yourself, but instead the ability to express who you are. Using #Identity, I wanted to express who I am through photos and words. My love, my strength, my fears, my passions. Why can’t I use this element to figure out who I am? And maybe even who you are. I am not a fan of trending, but I am a fan of getting people to take a step back and try to figure out what it is we are doing on this World Wide Web. This monstrous being that we have all yet to figure out. There are growing pains, there will be consequences, but can we still not exercise our rights of freedom of speech? Why am I so ashamed to know my professor is following me when I have nothing to be ashamed of? I am human. Someone who is following a dream. But I fear losing myself and my “multiple spirits” in the process of that dream for fear of being prosecuted for my individuality.

I want to use my #identity to make a point. I am creative, I am open, I am me. I do not want that to affect my career. If I am successful at my craft it is because I am successful at my craft. It is my #identity that makes me who I am and also makes me successful. Why should that be held against me? If anything it should be supportive that I am willing to find myself so that others and even students can also find themselves. I think it is time we teach #identity in classes, showing students how to be themselves and professional at the same time. Can we do that? Can we make it so that we can be ourselves and professionals at the same time? It’s like having to hide tattoos at work. Why? Why are we constantly hiding who we are? I understand that tattoos are still taboo and that some can be seen as offensive and that, say, as an ambulance worker works on an elderly lady having a heart attack, she may have an emotional or stressful reaction to a tattooed man who is in her home while she is on the brink of death. But isn’t that just a stereotypical response? When will we break down those walls? Can we not be professionals in our field and yet have a real life? Take Tom Kuntz as an example. Can he help us pave the way to a new identity for teachers and what we are expected to look like and act like? Is hiding who we are maybe the thing that is held against us in the eyes of the students? Is them seeing us as “not human” causing a rift and keeping students from wanting to listen? “Who is she anyway? She has no idea what I have been through. She doesn’t understand me”, seeing teachers as pods who only come out to teach, when in reality, teachers are some of the weirdest people you will ever know. Is our lack of #identity the thing that keeps us from really connecting with the students and the curriculum? Maybe if we bring our life to the class and to the world we can be seen as someone who is human and we too use this curriculum in our strange, daily lives. It’s like the tutor vs teacher phenomenon. Students want to feel comfortable in a learning environment, so can we achieve this with #identity?

There are so many fine lines and psychological aspects to this. You cannot be a friend if you are trying to be an authority figure. That is a given. But can we not be human? Can we not be who we are? At what point are we too much ourselves?

This digital identity concept has been both frustrating and thought-provoking. I want to find a way to incorporate this into my WAW class concept. There are so many “things” to cover and I am still not sure at what point DI will be something that can be solved. Judgements will always be passed as it always has throughout human existence. But maybe, as we start to grow with the burgeoning WWW, maybe we can begin to find a way in which we can be both ourselves and professionals without the fear of being persecuted.

The Rise and Fall of My Love for the Digital Age

I know I am supposed to create this "digital identity" but I think the problem with that is I don't even know my own identity anymore. I have my "teacher" identity, or the one I put out there for me as a "writer" (if you can even call me that). But who am I? Why is this Digital Age the thing I feel I want to turn my back on most? Is it possible I feel I have lost my identity due to it? That I created an identity that I had only made up? Being one of the first of the three generations the internet has extended to, to take to it as if it were the future and only the future. But what if I don't want that to be the only future? What if I want more? More life, more physical, more something. Is there not more to life than sitting in front of a computer for 18 hours a day?
My entire work career, short of waitressing, has been in front of a computer. Myspace and Facebook and Pinterest and blogs...hours upon hours staring at a screen putting my words onto a screen that was supposed to emulate me as a person. I was witty and charming and sexy on the computer...this fantasy world of make-believe. The photos, the words, the things we typed were supposed to be us, but they weren't, were they? I always thought I was true to myself and I still feel like I am, so why does my "digital identity" feel like such a farce? Is it because of the fact I never really had an intimate moment in a digital realm? You can't create on screen what you can when sitting across from someone. Anyone. Yet I made it my life. I was addicted.

I never understood why my ex husband (at the time my live-in boyfirend) was so perturbed by my Facebook/myspace usage. Wasn't that what we all did? Live this online life that was real? It was real, wasn't it? It was like those addicted to World of Warcraft or other alternate life games and social media. It takes us away and makes us who we would rather be. Someone other than ourselves.

Maybe I was too naive and young to be given the gift of using the internet. The repercussions had yet to be fully determined. It was all so new and exciting and all these other realms of communication were so exciting. And yet now, now I hate it. I deleted my Facebook, assured it was just another evil in which to cheat/scam/deceit others into thinking things that were not true or even convincing yourself that those things were real. It is no longer for me.

I am not sure what my bitterness is towards the digital age considering I felt like a revolutionary in it. As I struggle to create a Wix.com page, I find myself more and more angry that I am forced to sit and look at another computer screen. Can I just have a face to face discussion? I need real interactions. Human interactions. What we used to get when we were forced to awkwardly express ourselves to another person with no time to think and "text" or "comment" or "like". I had strangers come to me at bars and say, "oh, you're that girl on Facebook". I had no idea who they were but apparently they were one of my 956 friends on Facebook.

This bitterness and "over it-ness"could all stem from the 2 years of living alone and working from home online, Facebook being my only "personal" outlet. Or maybe the most recent break-up where seeing him with other girls, happily enjoying their company that made me realize, it just wasn't for me. I was jealous. I didn't want to be on the computer looking at photos of my ex with other people, I wanted to be the one out there, not at a computer stalking someone's page. I hated myself and I hated what the digital age was doing to me. So much bitterness and hate. So much confusion. Why was it all so complicated. Now with new communication outlets, it made me want to crawl away under a rock where no one could see me or hear me.

But here I am having to blog. Or maybe, getting to blog.

I am aware of the absolute amazing power the internet has created. All of it. I find it absolutely fascinating and amazing, at least I did in the beginning when we started memes in threads that would be used over and over again. Now the concept of "trending" is tiresome and annoying. Nothing is unique anymore. Nothing is a novelty, it's all played over and over a million times and retweeted and posted. I know that I used to have an awe over that concept, but now...now it seems sheepish...like mindlessly forwarding emails about giant spiders that live under your toilet seat and so forth. That is how I see it. Spam. Forwarded garbage. And I know it isn't all like that. I know there is more to it...at least deep down I know that. But now, here, at this moment, I have a hard time seeing it. I have a hard time appreciating it. I have a hard time being ok with my digital identity because in the end, I have no digital identity. I don't want to have one. I just want to be me, sitting in a chair in a room talking to another person who sits in front of me. I want to be human, not digital. I want to be real. I want to be me.

I guess this then will segue me into my next blog...what is my digital identity and how can I find it and still be me? And lastly, do I want one and can I succeed without one? The answer to that last question, currently, is no. I then must ask myself, what identity must I use? Maybe my "true" identity is not what should be my "digital identity".

431 LPP yeah you know me...

As many times as I have read this text I keep coming back to the same problem in my head. Ok, well, there are many, but the one that gets me seems to be the reality of teaching to teach...or to do the thing. How do we prep to do a thing, anything? I keep going back to my grad school and how we are eased into teaching like an old man into a hot bath...slow and painful. I feel in all the time I was teaching or being taught to teach,I always felt like I had my head up my ass.I never really knew what it was they were trying to convey. Maybe it was all the NCLB bullshit that irked me, or maybe it was that I was sacred, but as I read Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation I kept seeing how it was when I was going through school. Most notably the Butcher apprentice.

When being taught how to teach they say a lot of things that really mean nothing to you at first because you have yet to be in the classroom. You take tests and you pass the but the actual teaching doesn’t take place until later...or maybe I should say “too late”. When co-teaching (or interning, it really varied on the teacher you were observing) it was then that you wished someone was whispering in your ear all the things you wish you had learned in school months before. It was like walking back into the butcher room, them handing you a slab of raw beef and saying, “Have at it”. Have at what?! I could end up making a serious mistake...killing myself or others if I don’t lose a limb in the process.

That’s kind of how it feels when thrown into the pit of teaching. The savages will rip you alive. I have no idea how I survived my first year of subbing when I didn’t have an ounce of experience under my belt. Just tossed in the meat room and told to just do it. So I did and it was amazing. All the tests and exams in the world will never really prepare you for it...the feelings, the anxiety. None of it. I think before you can teach you should be given a few months of subbing hours first to really see what it is like in the classroom. Then when you have survived and found a new-found appreciation, then you can go towards getting your credentials and then all of a sudden everything will make sense and you will know what you know you will need to know, you know?

Maybe this isn’t fully an indepth analysis of what we read, I am not sure exactly what it is I am supposed to do other than apply what I have learned to what I have learned. I guess for me, this class is to help me understand more of why we are set up the way we are and maybe help me to see what I can do to help to make it better. I mean, what can I really do but I think, based on my experience as a learner and an educator, I think that there is a lot that can be done to prepare those who are to be in the classroom to be better in the classroom.

Also, my other blog was deleted, to my dismay, so my indepthness has been somewhat crushed. I do plan on having a much better follow up to this in my next blog...any maybe something more witty and worth reading