I am Evans sounds simple enough right?  As teachers, we find ourselves in a world of multiple personalities, and quite honestly, it takes quite a while before a person ever really figures out her identity as a teacher.  So much emphasis in education is placed on the content, the tests, the standards, the frameworks, but so little on the largest framework that determines one's success or failure-relationships and knowing one's personality identity, asserting that for students to see.

When I think about my journey as a teacher, I realize that at first and for a few years, I was simply my old nickname of Mrs. English.  I wasn't anything commanding; I wasn't really strong.   In a world of private school, I had come from a place where content was king and students magically created written masterpieces without much effort on my behalf.  I could be weak and wonderfully survive.

Enter me.  Enter the turnaround at my school.  Here I was, as green as green could be, and I was largely unprepared for the challenges that would face me.  No one really believed in the school.  People were nice, but I'm sure they thought the school would be the end of me.  But somehow, someway, I survived.  And I became Evans.

In college, education schools seem to be based around a perfect world where class management is just about having rituals and routines and emphasizing those routines-all in all, it's a bit person-less, dehumanizing.  In the world of education, everyone enters an average classroom where most all students want to work.  Unfortunately, no school really preps teachers for the realityland of need they greet when they enter the classroom.  And it seems no one really bothers to emphasize how very important these relationships are in the classroom.

Luckily for me, in the turnaround for my school, God provided a wonderful best friend.  I remember the day we met clearly.  I was dragging in a wagon of my things, preparing to me a working "single" mom for the first time in two years, fresh out of my Masters and this bold, courageous, definitely not Southern teacher CARRIES my things including my wagon up the stairs.  She said something about coming off of 250, so I definitely thought she was a weightlifter for a while.  And figurative weightlifter she was.  I owe so much to her coattails, and owe so much to her teacher wisdom I hadn't gained from anywhere else.

Of course, I should mention that because I thought her teaching swag was so wonderfully amazing, when I found out I'd be teaching with her, I went home and cried the entire weekend, knowing I would never measure up to her amazing posters, incredible plans, and overall comfort with public education.  Little did I know that she would become the most powerful teaching mentor I've had in my life.

All of my thoughts here today are disjointed.  I have so much running through my head.  I am sure I will continue to edit and make sense of what I want to say.  But for now, I am Evans.