Tuesday, March 19, 2013

The Start...

My name is Doug Robertson, and I am a fourth grade teacher. I currently live in Hawaii. I love my job. And I'm writing a book about it.
Well, kind of. It's a book about teaching. And about being a teacher, which is different from teaching. It's a book with stories from my classroom and stories about my kids. It's also a book about my philosophy of teaching. How I feel about teaching and what I think the proper ways to do it are. Well, the proper ways for me. One of my big things, which you'll probably read about a lot, is that teaching is a performance art. And as an art form everyone does it a little (or a lot) differently.
This book will be a little silly, because I'm a fairly silly person and I can be an extremely silly teacher. It will probably be weird. Most of my students are weird. So is the person who teaches my students. It will, of course, have it's serious parts. I am very serious when it comes to talking about the whys of teaching, even when the topic is fun. Teaching is serious business that, I feel, is best done with a sense of humor. And it will probably have sad moments. Every teacher has a pocket full of stories they wish they didn't know.
Here's the thing, though. My book isn't done. It's barely started, really. I'm still at the start of the first draft. It is entirely possible that this whole endeavor could take years. I'm a busy guy with a brand new baby and a lot on my plate. I'll work on it when I can.
Everything here will eventually be in the book in some form (except this). I'm not going to post whole chapters, just excerpts. Think of it as teasers. Mostly this is because I'm pretty proud of my writing and I want some of it to be out in the world already. It's also because maybe one of you knows a publisher and can send them my way.
The book is called He's the Weird Teacher: and other things students whisper about me. It'll be done when it's done. Thanks for playing along.

- Doug

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