...

The "Daily" of Daily Eclectoid is mainly aspirational. As you can see, it's been a while.

Aspirations are important, though. I've previously discussed avoiding proclamations—making too strong of a statement risks structural collapse.

Tell yourself you're going to run a mile every day and missing the twenty-eighth day will bring with it a much stronger chance of permanently ending your desire to run at all. Set out to run every other day while telling yourself it's okay to occasionally miss a run, and you stand a much better chance of sticking to a regimen. So posting here daily is the aspiration. The success will vary, and that's how it should be.

I am closing out my fourteenth contracted year in education. I always add contracted because I spent two years after college as a day-to-day substitute, a long-term substitute, and an Exam Prep Coordinator (with a business card!) for the Huntington Learning Center. This was in Pittsburgh, where a teaching license is required to sub.

Pittsburgh still feels like home, but back in 2010 Pennsylvania's then-governor, Tom Corbett, was slashing the public education budget. Open teaching jobs were nonexistent, and at the end of two years I was being paid as a long-term sub while designing lessons and helping push so-called "bubble kids" across the finish line of passing state standardized English tests. This was a successful endeavor, but seemingly every retiree's position closed upon their leaving, pushing up class sizes and closing opportunities. I could continue doing what I was doing, but I would continue to be paid as a sub and not receive healthcare in a pre-ACA world.

Corbett lost his reelection bid, the first incumbent Republican to lose the bid since the 1800s. Not a huge punishment for him. The damage to public education is still felt today, and he gets to eke out his existence legally bribing public officials as a lobbyist. Good work if you can get it.

Without those hardscrabble two years, which also included stints as an overnight custodian and a short-order cook, my current life isn't possible. My wife and I learned independence. We learned to rely on each other. We learned what we would and would not tolerate from ourselves, our colleagues, and our friends. We sat down at the end of it all and decided that a leap into a new direction—a move to a state with no relatives and no friends—was the only path forward. It was scary, but sometimes if you lean into the fear and self-doubt, you come out the other end a completely different person with a completely different set of skills. You just need a little bit of reckless faith that you'll likely land on your feet.

Fast forward to today and I find my career has zigged and zagged through unlikely fields. Teaching English was my trade, but I found myself coaching a very successful forensics team despite not even knowing what forensics was. (I know now: public speaking, not dead bodies.) I did this because the previous coach placed reckless faith in me. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, but she trusted I could figure it out and learn from constant failure.

I'm currently serving as an Instructional Technology Facilitator, despite not having internet access or a smartphone not even a decade ago. I had a crummy laptop I'd avoid using due to neo-Luddite tendencies. Back then, I spent most of my free time reading.

COVID changed this. I spent my time immersing myself in technology as a democratizing force. Now I have the privilege of spending my days helping teachers use tech not as a dog-and-pony show, but as a key to deeper learning experiences. Let's find the right tool for the right job together.

I hold this position because someone placed a reckless amount of faith in me. The only way to repay that debt is to work my ass off every second of every day. And when I can, I place my own reckless faith in somebody. You should too.

This blog won't often focus on education. You're not going to see Ed Tech demos here. You're not going to find lesson plan ideas. This is a space for me to noodle. To reflect. It's a place to spend my spare time, so work-related topics will be limited. But there's the occasional need to reflect on the broader swaths of your life and year fourteen seems like the perfect time to do so.