Me as a Writer.

At some point when I wasn't looking, I became a writer. I became someone that keeps a notebook on them and jots down phrases like "people that hate slang" and "Charybdis and Scylla- time travelers" because I just know that one day I will have a great story to tell and I will need these random notes to help me tell it. 

In truth, I am a student and most of the time I have no idea what I'm doing, nor how I ended up at LSU in the Geaux Teach program. My love of stories and storytelling has evolved into a passion to teach others about the strength of their own literacy, and how they might use their literacy to connect to the world. I never thought of my personal writing as something that was related to my education at all until about 5 months ago when I entered Dr. Peckham's class and began questioning how I could be relating my experiences with writing to my experiences with education.

In the summer of 2013, I made the decision to become an English teacher. Since then, I've been obsessing over different educational philosophy and my place in our current education system. 

I am the product of a public school education in the United States. I know how to write a 5 paragraph essay (and know better than to use first person when writing one,) I know the tricks to use when taking a standardized test, and I know that when a little bell rings, I am supposed to get up, walk to a classroom, sit in a desk, sit down, and shut my mouth. These are just things I know. 

I barely even questioned that there was only one way to approach education (and writing) until I sat down in an EDCI class at LSU and the professor asked "So, whats your educational theory?" Huh? My edu-what?
My confusion only grew as I sat down in Dr. Peckham's class and one of the first assignments was to reflect on my influences as a writer. My influences? Oh, you mean, like, school? Uh...

I  know now that not only did I receive a public school education, but I received a traditional public school education. This seems an important distinction to make, because in my experiences in Geaux Teach I have met some non traditional public school educators. Ones that rock a Socratic circle and would love to show you her students' digital literacy projects. Teachers that lead writing workshops and are entering their students in poetry slams. I never had these types of teachers. I did not even know they existed! I wrote essay upon essay, resigned to the fact that English classes are boring, never realizing that there are some teachers in the world that had completely different ideas about teaching (and teaching writing in particulat) than the ones I found in my small town.  Who are they? Where are they? And perhaps the most important question... how did I go 13 years in an education system and never encounter one?