A long slow goodbye…

Once upon a time there was a vocally challenged teacher who set up a blog to converse with her students.

And every day the blog got busier and though her vocals got better, it didn’t matter, because the conversation took over… she didn’t have all of the answers, or even some of them but writing helped make sense of the wonder and mayhem, wonder and madness of the classroom.

Until one day her voice dried up. There was a death, and another death. There was a change of job, and another one. And there was no longer a wondrous, infuriating classroom to blog about, to make sense of, to interrogate, review and reflect.

And because of that she stopped blogging, despite the wonders it had brought to her life [here, here, here, here, here, here, here]

Until finally her blog went dormant and became an archive.

This blog is dormant, though I hope it’s not yet extinct.

If you’ve asked a question, posted a comment, or simply wondered about the silence on here, it’s because I am no longer blogging. Perhaps I am thus no longer a blogger, though I keep saying ‘once an English teacher, always an English teacher’… despite the three years I have now been out of the classroom.

I cannot adequately capture the sadness I feel that I no longer write. A combination of grief and circumstances robbed me of my voice and my reason for writing but I retain the hope that one day I will again find the writing voice I once had. Blogging to make sense of the endless internal dialogue so many of us teachers have running on a loop as we turn over the day’s events in the classroom in our heads has been one of the great pleasures of my life thus far.

I’ll leave the archive up, though it’s probably best to warn you that trends come and go (I’m thinking in particular of the comparative) – I’m not sure if the Evelyn of 2017 would give the same advice as she did in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014… so pay at least some attention to the date on which a blog post was published if you are still using it as a guide.

Lastly, thanks to all of you who used and still use the site, who contacted me via the blog, who enriched my professional life so much and who reached out with such sincerity when grief came knocking at my door.

I’m not done with writing (I hope). But for now, I’m done with this blog.

Evelyn

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