Easter 2024. As much as I detest the Easter holiday (insert traumatic childhood story about my pet bunny), this “date” marks five years since I decided against a Ph.D. program and fell into a rabbit hole (ooh, a pun!) on Twitter that led me to #OER webinars and #ungrading posts (that freaked me out), among other learning opportunities.  The summer of 2019 is when I took a MOOC class on Open Pedagogy and spent $500 of my own money to enroll in the Creative Commons Certification Course for Educators. That summer marks the turning point in my pedagogical journey. And it was a path set out by the universe after Sadie passed away in October of 2018. I wanted to distract myself, so I applied - sent in the application on Christmas - to the School of Ed at my alma mater. Yes, they eventually, sometime after Easter that spring, informed me that I didn’t make it into the program, and I believe that was the second time I applied to NDSU (first time might’ve been to the earn a Ph.D. in English...

*reading through the draft of what might be my next book* I found this nugget from when I was brainstorming for the Great Plains Alliance in Computers and Writing conference (2007):  This presentation comes out of frustration.  It finally occurred to me after reading Kinsey’s piece (and other pieces online regarding recording/reflecting one’s thoughts somewhere) that it was okay to have a teaching blog, to be a teacher who put her thoughts OUT THERE for public display. I knew it was okay, to a certain extent, before I found these articles and online postings by others, yet I didn’t have any evidence beyond the fact that it was working for me, so bugger off type of excuse/answer/reason.  Sure, some colleagues thought I was showing students how “human” I was which was detrimental, according to “them,” but, um, who cares? Aren’t all teachers human, really? And aren’t the best teachers those who bring a part of themselves into the classroom?  [If you are a teacher of wri...