It amazes me that we always know what the auto-shop teacher is doing over the weekend; that we always know what the wood shop teacher is doing over the weekend; that we always know what the football coach is doing over the weekend; but that we don’t know what the math teacher, the reading teacher and the writing teacher are doing over the weekend.
If you teach auto shop, you should enjoy tinkering with cars; if you teach wood shop, you should love the feel of a power saw. The coach should probably be the guy who holds the neighborhood Super Bowl party. Likewise, the writing teacher should probably be working on a short story, poem or essay on the side.
It’s no more necessary for the writing teacher to be a professional writer than for the coach be a former NFL star. But it’s necessary to be able to talk shop—to really know how scary that blank, white page looks, to know how you overcame that fear last time, and to realize today, with this assignment, you might face that fear again. Therefore, this site is as much about reconnecting with the writer you dreamed of becoming before discovering teaching as it is about student instruction. What works for you as a writer, will work for them as writers. Likewise, what bores you will also bore them.
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