This month marks the twenty-seventh September that I have spent in a public school. I attended elementary school through high school in the same public school system. I completed internships and school-based research in college and graduate school. Since graduating, I have worked in schools in Durham, N.C., the Bronx, and Manhattan. I literally cannot remember a fall when I was not preparing for the start of a new school year.

This year is unique as it will be the first time in those twenty-seven that I spend a significant portion of time sharing my experiences with an audience larger than my family and friends through this blog. I begin this journey thinking about a phrase that many folks use to describe classroom-based experiences as coming "from the trenches."

For twenty-six years I have spent my weekdays learning and working in public schools and this experience has never struck me as particularly similar to the battle scenes from All Quiet on the Western Front. Certainly, writing stories in Mrs Faucette's second ...

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