Why would I choose to open a virtual schoolhouse for teachers? Maybe because it's a cute theme and ties in well with it's intended audience's occupation. Maybe because, being a first year teacher, I spend a lot of time in school. Or, maybe because I feel a melancholy desire to return to the days of the one-room schoolhouse - not so much because they were great bastions of learning and excellence in teaching, but more for the closeness between the community and the school that existed. The school building was raised by the donations, sweat and hopes of the townspeople. The teacher was shown respect and seen as an educator rather than a babysitter, or, more's the pity, a parole officer. Teachers and parents communicated, and teachers were often invited into their students' homes for meals and socializing. Education was important, and often, a school was the second public meeting place to be constructed in a town, following the town's church.

Now, violence, drugs, sex, and abuse battle with literature, math, and science for our student's attention on a daily basis. Sometimes we win, too many times, they win. It can be so disheartening to those in the trenches fighting for the futures, and often for the very lives of those students. There need to be more places in the world, and on the web, for teachers - those fated fools who hear the siren song of hope and possibility in the all to often desparate, angry and despairing cry of our nation's children. Places they can go to find help, encouragement, sympathy, empathy, and to experience a renewal of spirit, of purpose, of faith in their mission that will save our children from the streets, prisons, and cemetaries of this world.

I am young and naive, only a first year teacher. I don't have the battle scars that some of my colleagues bear. I see things through idealistic, and often unrealistic eyes. I am only now beginning to taste the bittersweet ambrosia of success and failure, elation and frustration, hope and despair that is a teacher's daily repast more surely than mediocre cafeteria food. But the flame of my passion for these children and this profession are undimmed, and if by sharing that passion, that love, that desire to make a difference, I can fuel or rekindle the flame for a fellow teacher, then I have done more to help the students than I could have ever have hoped to achieve. And it is, ultimately, for those students that we struggle, suffer, celebrate, fear, and bask in an almost parental pride every day of our career. So, for those who give their all, for those who hear that siren song and feel the joys and pains of our collective soul, I offer up this humble, one-room schoolhouse. Welcome home.

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Graphics by Mama Estes.



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