Juggling

If you didn't know, I am a teacher. A junior high English teacher, to be exact. I've wanted to be a teacher for as long as I remember and I love my job with a passion that surprises even me sometimes.

There is something about education that thrills me. I love that my job is different every single day. I love that I get to work with 100 kids in varying stages of awkwardness every single day. I love that my job challenges me and I honestly do love working in a broken system. I feel like I am doing good work, making a difference, being the change that I want to see in the world.

If you know me well enough, it should make sense to you that blogging about healthy living (like I used to) didn't really excite me. Education excites me. Educational technology excites me. Writing instruction excites me. Quinoa, while delicious and a wonderful source of complete protein, doesn't really excite me.

I've been trying to find a balance between trying to establish a web presence and a PLN within the educational sphere and staying in contact (and in synch) with the many wonderful people that I met in the two years I was a healthy living blogger. I tried having a separate teaching blog, but it was far too complicated to run two blogs, and then I just stopped blogging altogether.

I know I don't really need to explain my decision to switch my blogging focus from food and fitness to primarily education, but I still wanted to write about so I could process it myself. There are still a lot of non-educational things that I am interested in and will probably write about, but my goal is to use this blog first and foremost to reflect on my teaching practice and share new and interesting things that I am doing in my classroom or that other people are doing in their classrooms.

Do I still work out and eat healthfully? Yes. Will I still share recipes and healthy living tips occasionally? I certainly hope to! But I also intend to use this space to flesh out some of my ideas for transforming my classroom into a mobile technology workspace, teaching argumentative writing strategies to students as they move away from concrete thinking, and building a community of literary nerds.

My hope is that But First, Coffee will begin to reflect who I truly am more than Running Foodie ever did. I am not just protein smoothies and half marathons! My job is an enormous part of who I am, and I am excited to get to share that with you. I do hope you'll stick around and see what this space transforms into.

xoxo,
Megan