Well, first of all, I’m not going to address the second question.  I’ll let you figure that one out yourself.  You may not care who I am but find my self-deprecating humor a pleasant way to pass your lunch hour.  You may care who I am because you know me.  Maybe I even taught you at some point in your life.  If so, why have you not come back to visit me?

Sorry, I said I wasn’t going to address the second question.

On to the first: My name is Jason.  I’m 36 years old.  Let’s see, what other details are pertinent . . . I teach math and science to middle school students at a classical Christian school, a vocation I began six years ago.  Prior to teaching I spent five years in corporate engineering, after which time God employed “face-in-the-sand” tactics to completely change the course of my life (and not just vocationally).

I am married to Anne, and together we have created two delightful little girls, Alice and Eleanor (actually Eleanor is screaming right now so “delightful” describes her more generally, but not particularly in this current instance).  Alice will be two at the end of this month (we actually share a birthday, which I thought was really special the day she was born but then quickly realized that my birthday will no longer belong to me, which is fine, I guess – I mean, it’s time to grow up and focus on the kids, right?) and Eleanor is 11 weeks old (hence the screaming).

I am the product of a typical American private education (at least from 8th – 12th grade).  I hated school until probably my junior year in college, but even then I saw school as a series of hoops to jump through in order to become credentialed for the marketplace.  After college I did two years of graduate school during which time I started to feel a bit of a stirring interest (I would not yet call it “love”) for “learning for learning’s sake,” but this quickly dissolved once I graduated and entered the corporate world.

This is a curt and probably cynical summary of my education.  Don’t get me wrong, I had enjoyable moments in high school, actually loved college, and felt stimulatingly challenged in graduate school.  But as I develop what I think I want to say or reflect upon in this blog as regards my experience as an educator, my early utilitarian view towards education is worth highlighting.

In fact, if you had told me in high school or even college that I would one day become a teacher, I would have probably said one of two things, and probably both:

1) Why?  And waste all my education on a job that pays less than $50K/year?

2) You obviously don’t know me.

Now if you told me that one day I would leave teaching, I would probably say one thing to you:

1) I can’t imagine wanting to do anything else.

So let’s start there.  With who I am, that is.  Whether you care or not – well, frankly I think it’s still too early in this blog for you to answer that one.