Welcome to My Attic

  

The time has come to launch a fresh blog format. It signifies a significant shift in personal tectonic plates. My first blog, Diary of a First Year Teacher, began on the first day of my teaching career in January 2011. I was a mother of four who had spent decades in a hybrid state of staying home full time or working odd jobs to supplement our income. Jobs that included in-home daycare, ski resort seasonal work, custodial duties, and slinging hash at the local truck stop. Although I possessed a degree in psychology, it was important to me to be the first face my kids saw when they climbed off the school bus each day.

 

When our youngest entered junior high, I knew it was now or never, and enrolled in elementary education courses at a local university. Diary of a First Year Teacher was my public space to share personal reflections on a very late-in-life career decision. I wrote about my foibles, my successes, and I wrote about my precious students and their days in Mrs. Dahl’s Magic Treehouse-themed classroom. Those early posts were the written version of war zone “meatball surgery.” I was too busy learning the ins and outs of teaching and balancing my family to spend much time editing my posts. I’m sure they are filled with typos and grammatical errors that would make me cringe if I looked back. I will always hold an irreplaceable spot in my heart for those early days of classroom teaching.

 

On the last day of my first year of teaching, I discontinued contributing to that blog post and launched a follow-up blog, the Humboldt Diaries, that continued my ramblings and reflections, mostly along educational lines.

 

A third blog site began in 2015 with the launch of my volunteer organization, Project Armchair, which chronicles the journey of volunteers and myself as we established a non-profit organization for certified teachers that uses literacy as a means of stress relief for homeless or hospitalized children.

 

Eleven years after I hit submit on my first blog post, I look back on my professional adventures and smile with deep satisfaction. Immediately after completing the elementary education degree, I embarked on a master’s degree in early childhood education, completing that in 2013. In 2015 I transitioned to a larger school district in a dual role as Title I interventionist and instructional strategist. Project Armchair was birthed out of an awareness of a nearby homeless shelter and the needs represented there.

 

In 2017, I applied to a doctoral program at the University of North Dakota and began coursework that same year. On track to complete my degree in Teaching & Learning in 2020, a little world event called COVID-19 delayed my human subject research and pushed back my graduation until spring of 2021. My dissertation topic reflected my Project Armchair work and was enormously interesting to me, if no one else. I never dreamed that I would find such satisfaction in research but found it changed me in fundamental ways.

 

By the numbers, here’s the culmination of the last decade for me. One undergrad degree, one master’s degree, one PhD (by far the most challenging thing I have ever attempted), and five different professional education roles. I founded a non-profit organization with the help of a selfless and equally passionate group of board members and volunteers which continues to grow.

 

My family has changed, too, since that first blog post. My husband, John and I, will celebrate our forty-third wedding anniversary this year. Our children are all married now, we have three of the darlingest grandchildren this world has ever seen, and a fourth due any day. Since my last post in The Humboldt Diaries, just days before the world shut down for COVID, the years have been joyous, stressful, busy, and blissfully mundane.

 

So… that’s the CliffsNotes version of the last sixteen years. And now? Now it is time to leave behind the constant stress of balancing a full-time job and even fuller-time studies and get back to writing about things that interest me. This new blog will be for my benefit, not yours. Sorry if that rocks your world a little. I am not overly concerned about the analytics of those that stumble upon and read these ramblings. I write because I enjoy the writing process. I like how choosing words and manipulating them to convey meaning makes me feel. I like searching for, choosing, discarding, then replacing just the right word in just the right sentence. It’s creative mental health for me.

 

As for the blog title, Rosehill refers to my real-life farm in North Dakota. It sits atop a small knoll on the open prairie where prairie roses grow wild and in abundance. This one-mile square of rolling earth has been in my husband’s family since 1941, and we are the third generation to own it. It is now a part of my own soul and spirit. I love this place and its breathtaking sunsets and endless blue sky.

I also love big attics. The kind you can walk around in upright and store old trunks and dusty boxes. The kind that kids can pull the string on the single lightbulb and play in on rainy days. I don’t have that kind of attic. I did in my previous home in Vermont, and I sorely miss it. I have a crawlspace, like most prairie farmhouses. But in my dream attic there are all sorts of stored treasures and random items that a grandchild or friend might enjoy going through.

 

That’s the idea behind this blog. There is no theme here. Just whatever my little heart desires to write about. Random, or poignant. Comical, or deep things of faith. It will be my own version of a church potluck. Just grab a plate and see what lines the table. You might find seven casseroles, one Jello mold with some sort of unidentified mystery food jiggling inside it, and three Bundt cakes. The food may not be great, but the company will be just fine.

 

For those that have read my previous blog posts, thanks for joining me yet again. It amazes and warms me when others take the time to stop by. I hope you will enjoy this new format as well.

 

So, welcome to my attic. Grab a dusty chair and let’s see what’s inside that box over there in the corner…