I started this blog 16 years ago when I was a member of the faculty in the College of Education at West Chester University. The idea was simple. Blogs were fairly new at the time and being the young netizen that I was, I decided I wanted to start a blog so I could think about and reflect publicly on matters and issues related to teacher education, and hopefully engage others in some conversation.
As is likely the case for many new bloggers, I started off pretty strong. I posted something every few weeks (sometimes months) on a host of topics and I thought that was fairly good.
But as is also the case for many I suspect, I ran out of gas after a couple of years. I was busy with other things, first as a member of the faculty and then in the new role I was about to start. I was in the final days as a member of the department faculty and would soon be moving into administration as the Associate Dean in the College of Education. At this point things got very busy and my job became a 12-month industry. The blog suffered because it was being crowded out by rafts of responsibilities I had at the university. The blog went into a fallow period during which I posted virtually nothing for the longest time.
About 10 years after I started the blog, I resurrected it when I was in a new position at Millersville University. By that time I was also an officer in the Pennsylvania Association of Colleges and Teacher Educators (PAC-TE). I used the blog at the university to reflect on events occurring in my college related to the various disciplines therein and I used it as the chair of the government relations committee for PAC-TE in order to share information about legislation we were following and official statements we were making as an association.
I've posted nothing on the blog since the last entry about five years ago – Another long period of inactivity.
But now I have a lot more time for reflection because I retired from PASSHE and the university in January of this year. I have a lot more time to think about and reflect on things going on in education in general in our country as well as in educator preparation more specifically. As I read the news and as I see what's going on in social media, frankly, I'm concerned about the state of basic education in America and the profession to which I devoted over 40 years of my career. So, I'm going to take one last attempt to resurrect the classroom reflecting pool. I'll have more time to think about and reflect. And to write.
Stay tuned to see where this goes.
Until next time...
