Teaching, Remembering, Writing: My Own Mentor

This is what my work space has become in the last few days: I've been terrible at keeping order. The concepts of 'control' and 'organization' have become a thing of the past - at least for now.

I have ten years of teachers journals, handouts and downloaded articles from in-service courses on reading. I'm in phase two - get to phase three and then 'phase out!' only i'M finding the right consistency between research and teaching experience is rather tricky. I've always puppeted my own lesson plans in front of students (and a few teachers and professionals) but writing never to an audience that I don't know, don't see, have generally no idea. I've been reliving teaching - this time all in my mind.

It's hard to find the right voice, the right kind of everything. But yet, I allow myself to continue to write in this type of vulnerability - walking soggily in the rain, no umbrella, no rain or trench coat, just a simple 'do it as if' experience - But there is that seemingly gentle voice acting as a guide, a bit of a mentor, and when the right kind of word(s) come(s), it's already time for coffee. Sound familiar?

I prefer to begin the writing by remembering the raw experience of let's say, learning to read; it will help me of course with writing about the experience of the very act of what I am teaching - this time behind the scenes of the teacher, just the observer, the lurker of my subconscious.

What exactly guided me to write those journals ten years ago? What moment was I feeling when I wrote them? What did I learn from them?

I'm so very lucky I kept these journals and even continued to write them way after the assignment for this particular course ended. There's something very theraputic about reliving them. But of course, that's another entry.