on a more cheerful note...

I was reading a friend's blog and wrote this response; then I thought I'd post it here too, to offset the mood of the previous post.

Here's the original post... the key portion being, "the thing about teaching for [me] is that getting better at it isn't hard work. At least not in the sense of it not being something I have to force myself to do — I want to do what I need to do to keep improving, changing, growing as a teacher. I really do do this kind of stuff for fun... I do everything I do because it makes me a better teacher — even my writing. My central thing — that which connects all my dots — is the teaching."

And here's my response...

hiya XE, I liked this post, surprised to see no comments on it. despite my gloomy post from a few minutes ago, essentially I do love teaching — it's like breathing, it's my life, and yes, it's the only thing that it's easy to work at getting better at. One reason I quit the internet biz is b/c I just couldn't be bothered to keep up. If you want to stay abreast of technological developments, you have to read all these trade journals, etc. etc. Meanwhile for teaching I'm constantly reading and thinking and assimilating. It's easy and fun and engaging. Dunno what I'd do if I lost that profound interest. Sometimes I get the feeling that nothing I do makes any difference, b/c the whole educ system is so fucked up anyway, but mostly that's a fleeting impression — I hope it never settles in!