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.

When my wife, Anne, and I started dating three years ago, we spent quite a bit of time cooking together.  We enjoyed the challenge of a new recipe or the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie.  I also – before Instagram became all the rage – took photos of just about everything we created in the kitchen.  Anne thought that my photos were pretty good and most folks who were kind enough to be the guinea pigs for our food creations said our food wasn’t half bad either.  So we decided to jump on the food blog train.  And boy was it fun.  We established a style, developed some of our own recipes, improved our photography, and, in the process, built up a pretty good following.

Fast forward to the present day, a marriage and two kids later (yeah, things happened quickly), and the food blog is, well, in a permanent state of idle (although we did manage a new post about a week ago – hoorah!)  Oh, and I failed to mention that we also started a “family blog” in the meantime in order to keep family and friends updated with pictures of the kids, which has pretty much dissolved into a “month in review” of our Instagram feed.

I mean, who really has the time to keep a blog updated these days?  Life is too busy, right?

With that thought in mind, I decided to start this new (yes, third) blog today.  But why?  Do I enjoy the challenge of a low probability of success?

Well, first of all, this is my blog.  I take full responsibility for its value or lameness.  I won’t guilt Anne into helping me sustain it.

So what is it about?  Well, in a word, education.  I think.  More specifically, my experience in classical Christian education.  I am currently enjoying my sixth year of teaching at the same school (although I have been mistakingly telling everyone that it is my seventh year – have I already lost track of time?) and, for whatever reason – this spring in particular – I have felt compelled to start writing down some of my thoughts, thoughts which have as of late been flowing so quickly that I have had trouble organizing (and remembering) them all.

Why the sudden compulsion for reflection?  Well, I’m still trying to discern the answer to that question.  Sure, I could just be another dude on the internet who feels like he has something to say to the world that the world should listen to.  Or maybe I just need to get some thoughts written down.  “Why not just use a journal then?” you say.  Well, I don’t know, maybe I should.  Maybe this blog won’t make it past a few posts.  Fact is: I don’t really know what I’m doing.  But I invite you to humor me until you get bored or find something better to read, and let’s see where this goes.