A Welcome Back Reboot

Hey there!

My name is Katie and when I’m in the classroom, my students call me Mrs. Crews. It’s been a while, so I figured a reintroduction was in order.

Full disclosure, I haven’t been in the classroom regularly in nearly four years because we moved across the country and back, and my children were little and needed me at home. For some of you, that will give me more credibility because I’ve been mostly removed from the chaos that is American public education at the moment. And for some of you, this will give me less credibility, for the same reason. It is what it is.

A bit about me: I love sports, riding my bicycle, that first deep breath after stepping into an Oregon forest. I read widely, from history to young adult fantasy to classics. Favorite authors include Isabel Allende, Barbara Kingsolver, Erik Larson, and Laini Taylor. And anything 90s culture makes me feel happy and safe, from television like Dawson’s Creek to music from Matchbox Twenty to Lisa Frank and pogs.

I began my own education journey in Portland Public Schools and continued in Portland’s Catholic schools. I graduated with my own teaching license in 2009…when nobody was retiring or hiring.

So I subbed.

And I absolutely fell in love with it.

Everything happens for a reason, and as much as I fought to have my own classroom, my personality really thrives in subbing and it’s such a service to full time teachers. I’ve done the day-to-day gigs and several long-term placements. I’ve seen all sorts of classrooms and schools, public and private. Things that work, things that don’t, and all kinds of creative solutions in between. When I’m not subbing, I read books and blogs about education. It’s made me a very good observer of the education milieu in Oregon.

I hopped on Twitter again recently, mostly because I wanted a place to spout my thoughts and opinions in relative anonymity. Sometimes a girl just needs a place to be angry and outraged and feel like she’s making a difference without alienating people she actually knows IRL. Alas, I have made enough of a splash that people have started reading this blog again. So much has happened in the education space since the last time I updated, I figured it was time for a reboot. For the blog, and for education in the wake of Covid.

To be honest, I’ve spent a lot of this last year trying to figure out how to engage. My heart has always been in schools and education, since I was a little girl.  But the last two years have been so overwhelming, I didn’t even know where to start. But I always come back to writing. However, I’ve hesitated to add more noise to the fray. And the world is increasingly visual, so I’ve wondered about putting forth the effort to write. Will anyone read it?

Apparently yes, you will.

So, thank you. And cheers to rebooting American public education.