I haven't written a field note for the past few days because my brain has felt like a computer with three browsers open, each with 10 windows and 37 tabs open, three of them playing music, and I cannot figure out where the sound is coming from.
The school year is starting, which means I'm thinking about teaching again — not that I ever stopped. This fall, I'll be teaching two sections of freshman composition, so I'm thinking about what I want those students to understand about themselves as writers and how I can build a classroom where writing is something they use to think and not just something they turn in. The curriculum my college provides is amazing — I just spent 16 hours last week in hands-on PD learning how to teach the four projects that the department has spent more than 10 years developing. I’m truly excited, but also a little nervous. (Which is completely normal for me and why I have a meeting with my mentor later today.)
I'm also working on my dissertation, which means I'm spending a lot of time thinking about what former high school students have told me about the writing instruction they experienced before college. At the same time, I'm preparing to mentor a new teacher and building a school partnership program for reThink ELA, which has me thinking about what middle and high school English teachers actually need from curriculum, professional learning, and the people who create resources for them.
All of those thoughts keep bumping into each other. I'll start thinking about my freshman composition course and realize something about secondary writing instruction. I'll work on my dissertation analysis and think teachers need to know that students aren’t sure how to define writing. I'll work on revising resources for reThink ELA and wonder how those resources are working in a teacher’s classroom right now. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I'll remember that I'm supposed to write a field note.
The problem is that right now, if I sat down to write everything I'm thinking, you would receive approximately 5,000 words about writing instruction, reading, teacher preparation, curriculum, assessment, student agency, school partnerships, and probably three unrelated stories from classrooms I taught in 10 years ago. Nobody asked for that email.
So this week's field note is mostly a reminder (to myself as much as anyone else) that the work of teaching and writing happens in the middle of the mess, before we have a polished, publication-ready idea to share. Sometimes we're collecting wonderings, noticing connections, and sitting with questions long enough for them to become something worth saying. And sometimes we just need to say them, even if they’re incomplete — which is why I started reThink ELA in 2013 even though I had lots of questions, too many competing answers, and virtually no experience.
Whew! Now that I’ve started clicking through those 37 open tabs, I can see several field notes waiting in there. I just need to figure out which one is playing the best music and turn it up a little.
August 21, 2026 in Field Notes
