Dogwalk through Accotink Reflection (Introduction)

One of the great joys of writing a blog post is feeling the hair tingling excitement of walking that fine line between going viral with a self-destructive rant in front of a world wide audience, and creating a short masterpiece, raising penetrating questions that might lead others to consider simple, obvious, and creative solutions to seemingly impossibly complex conundrums. The hard part is where to start, because typical narratives have a clear beginning, middle, and end, whereas I do not really have a clear beginning, only a swelling level of frustration that has been building over many years like magma welling up from beneath the bowels of Yellowstone Park. Imagine how Cassandra must have felt after she read in advance the fall of Troy, when all her frantic warnings of impending doom were mocked or fell upon deaf ears. Imagine the frustration Columbus must have felt as he sailed from kingdom to kingdom trying to sell his proposition that Cathay could be reached by sailing in a different direction, only to face rejection time and time again. Imagine Galileo sitting before the Spanish Inquisition trying to defend his scientific observations, his tightly crafted logic based on those observations, against the highly refined, cynical scholasticism of the Establishment. Lacking the credentials or family connections of a Cassandra, Columbus, or a Galileo, imagine my sense of powerlessness when I try to present who I am, a unique thinker approaching education from an alternative perspective, to prospective employers when I try to sell the proposition that difficulties I faced early in my teaching career led me to Marymount University, where I earned a Master's Degree from their Professional Development School, that I am in a far different place professionally than when I started. When the conversation starts with failure, I have a hard time selling the proposition that repeated failure is often a precondition for great success. In an educational climate where the steady rise of SOL test scores has been trumpeted, celebrated, placed upon a garish billboard for everybody to see,while SAT scores have been consistently dropping, it has been difficult to get a word in edgewise.

(Next: Encounter with a crazy Chinese mother of an Advanced Academic Program student)