I am not a writer....weird!

Becoming a "slide tweaker" has been an interesting development in my journey as a student and educator. Interesting in the sense that 1. this was not something I ever thought I'd care about, 2. I have no formal training in the instruction of speech and communications, yet am more convinced than ever that teaching is a natural talent and gift that when cultivated can enable one individual to enable learning beyond their formal education, and 3. interesting in that I am not sure I WANT to teach composition again for a good, long while. I have become obsessed with the transformative power of speech. Watching a visualization, Reading and laying down Lincoln's meaning in The Gettysburg Address in class today gave me goosebumps.

More than that though, tweaking slides, clean design, and impacting, powerful speech have infused every part of my life beyond the classroom. I find myself considering design in other facets of my life, and sorely need to simplify and clean out my personal clutter, both physical and otherwise. I see design everywhere I go now, and I think about why things are and how things are much more now. In another respect, I have learned countless lessons from hours of TED talks, and have discovered a talent and love for public speech that, as that shy kid in every class, and that woman who is still too shy to talk to strangers, fascinates me. I realized on the way to the gym this evening after an eight hour mega-double that I have never really been a writer; I've never associated with that term, nor has that role ever been a part of my identity. Now, this may seem odd, considering that I am an English and writing teacher. I majored in English, and spent seven years instructing others on the skill of composing a piece of writing. How am I not a writer? Well, maybe the answer to that lies in the fact that I have always seen my role as that of thinker. I don't teach others to write; I teach them to unlock their own potential as thinkers and use writing and the analysis of literature as a means to helping them understand some aspect of the world they did not previously understand. Even in school, I was the thinker, the analyzer, the synthesizer of information. Writing was just my way of proving or illustrating this synthesis. More on this later...for now, it's back to grading!