BACK AGAIN

I'm back! profoundly mortified that my students have discovered my blog. Of Co-ourse! Did I think they wouldn't? Procrastinator that I am, I disobeyed reoccuring, nagging thoughts that I should obliterate it from the web after my last blog.

They approach me shyly with self-deprecating, hopeful smiles. "I read your blog, Mrs. Krause. Are you going to write any more?" "I loved your stories. Let me know when you write something else." One audacious student cut and pasted part of one of my blogs and emailed it to me with the comment, "Wow, that's very powerful writing!" No matter, I always give them the curtest answer and change the subject.

What's wrong with that picture? What's wrong (maybe what's right) is that it's humbling to be under the same scrutiny from them that they they are under from me. I should be above that, shouldn't I? I've always thought so. (God! I hate admitting that.) What's wrong, also, is that I always thought I couldn't write when I taught. One process blocks the other. I thought. Also, that's what everyone told me.

I'm a proud person. And I should be. I write. I teach. I have a graduate degree. Whew! What baggage. What a blockage to the creative flow! Something's breaking though. Chink! Chink! Must be I'm just getting old! That's it. I'm too old to teach. I've gone back to teaching after a hiatus, too old to teach! I used to be right all the time. Now I find myself learning more from my students than they could ever hope to learn from me! And I've begun to write again.