Where do I belong? I have crested a kind of experiential barrier by teaching in my “hood” school for these past few months. I am forced to admit that I love my school. I will be very sad to leave it. My kids are upset that I am going, they want me to stay. Put that in your heartstrings and smoke it. I have confidentiality issues with blogging about what I’ve been through with these kids – I’m close to students who have had siblings shot and killed in shootouts with police, unstable home environments to the point that we allow them to do their laundry at school in the industrial washers, and one hundred other stories that would probably shock you in their mundane wrestling with personal toe holds on the climb to stable integrity. I teach sophomores and I have more than six in their second trimester of pregnancy. I feel so needed and so valuable, perhaps more than I have ever felt in my life. I’ve taken another job, but I am beginning to think that I am already where I belong… that’s not the way it works though. Maybe the year after next I’ll be back.