Since I last posted on this blog, lots has changed in my life. I loved living in Houston and working at the Central Public Library there, but my sweet papa got cancer (he was diagnosed in February 2013) and so we returned to Tyler a lot to visit more regularly, and discovered that our most beloved connections were in East Texas. By November, we were planning our move home. We did not make it back before Papa passed away, but I did get to come home and spend time with him on the weekend prior.
After getting back, I tried to stay home with Anna Kate again, but this time it didn't feel as sweet or as accepted. That might have been just feelings inside of me, but I kept looking for work--I wanted something as amazing as HPL, but there are slim pickings in Tyler for someone with as much useless education as me. Fortunately, my friend Brandon had my back; he was able to arrange a job for me at the non-profit he had recently begin working for. I took the position of Community Coalition Coordinator with Next Step Community Solutions, and learned so much about all that goes into attempts to change policies and practices on the community, environmental level. It is a difficult position because it requires that you work to put things in place that will impact communities and sub-communities, and it is hard to get all of the right people to join together to make the right changes.
While I was there, I built another blog that storehoused prevention data and information, and another website that basically dressed up the blog. When I wrote, that is the blog that I worked on.
The best part about that work was it has meaning. It is an uphill struggle (mostly against the ignorance of normal people, who offer alcohol and off-use prescription drugs to the kids in their lives), but it is an important struggle. The other best part was that I got to work closely with Brandon Davidson, who is one of my favorite people. He has this mind that just amazes me, though it also pushes him to do way too much all of the time.
Anyway, I got the chance to return to teaching just before school began again this past August. I am teaching 9th Grade Humanities at the Brook Hill School in Bullard, a private, Christian, college prep school. This is a job that challenges me every day. I like working directly with my students and hope to continually improve as a teacher. Perhaps I will write on this blog a bit more frequently, now, and I can share some of what it is like to teach 14-year-olds!
Who knows what is next?!
