The Ph.D'ing side of things

I don't know that I've written much about my doctoral work. It doesn't have the highs and lows that parenting does, nor does it include the joy of creating clear and useful products that knitting does. But it surely feeds my mind and soul in a very particular way.

Right now I'm in the midst of grading papers for the course I'm teaching. It's a course on school reform -- a subject near and dear to my heart. I'm struggling right now with the grading. Lots of folks have missed the main point of the paper. The writing is fine. The ideas are fine. Everything is fine. But missing the key component of the paper -- integrating that somehow into the argument, that's the problem. It's left me wondering if something is wrong with the assignment, which I created. Or with the teaching, which I'm only very partially responsible for. Or whether the point of the assignment is somehow out of vogue.

These questions, though I'm sure vague here, really cut to the heart of teaching and learning, which lights a fire in me. I love teaching. The weekly dialogue with students in person. The dialogue in writing as I respond to their writing. Engaging in enduring questions of school reform with others -- coming to conversations with just as many questions as they do and perhaps fewer answers now that I've spent many humbling years doing this work.

I find that doctoral work keeps me living in the realm of what I don't know. What I DO know, though, is that the everyday work of it -- the teaching, the grappling, the conversations with others, and in particular my students, are inspiring to me. And that will always keep me going.