Sorry I’ve been away for so long! I was in Cleveland the last few weeks teaching English to a bunch of 4th-7th graders, but I’m ready to start posting again.

My teaching experience was fantastic.  I got to teach both The Call of the Wild by Jack London and Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, so expect posts about those two books soon, but before I go into those things I think I need to take a step back and offer some thoughts on the recent shootings and other heartbreaking events in the news.

I was in middle school, the 8th grade, when the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred, and I’ve always really appreciated the fact that my history teacher at the time threw out his lesson plans for several weeks so we could focus on the significance of what had happened.  We needed time to process, time to ask questions, so he tossed out his plans and helped us cope, in a way, with the situation at hand.

I write all of this to say I realize this post deviates from the “finding faith in fiction” theme of this blog, but sometimes you have to take a step back from what’s expected in order to better process what’s in front of you: