I was in Oxford, Miss. this weekend, and it occurred to me that unless I make special plans to visit, it could be the last time I ever see that wonderful town. I’ll be pursuing another M.A. — this one in Eastern Classics — in Santa Fe in the fall, and leaving Mississippi in just weeks. I am very glad to have been here, to have done this, and to be leaving. I am very excited to be returning to the West.

Three years ago I was in California — a year out of college and recently returned from Buenos Aires — packing and preparing to drive to Mississippi to be a public school teacher. In a few weeks it’ll be three years since the Mississippi Teacher Corps required me to start keeping this blog. I’ve maintained it intermittently, at times abandoning it and returning only to post required entries on MTC-assigned topics. This is the 36th month I’ve lived in Mississippi, and the 80th post. I taught for a year in the tiny town of Sardis, Miss., where I had the most difficult year of my life; I moved to the capital and began teaching in an “inner-city” school, finished the MTC program and was awarded an M.A. in Curriculum & Instruction from the University of Mississippi; and I stayed to teach a third year. I’ve taught eight “preps” (or subjects– nine including summer school), and 400-some students (probably over 500 including summer school– which from a simplified calculation is about 0.1% of all public school students in Mississippi, or 0.4% of the public high school students).

I’ve not maintained this blog much better in the year since it’s stopped being a curricular requirement than I did when it was; but not much worse, either, and I have appreciated the strange space, and been told by distant people that they appreciated it, too. So I’ll try to keep at it, at least as half-heartedly as I have these last three years. But I have been mulling over a change of venue (especially since blogger capriciously ate a few posts), in order to have room for more technical experimentation and a more apparently permanent place. And the timing is good.

This hasn’t been a Teacher Corps blog for a year, and in a few weeks it won’t even be a teacher blog anymore. So thaumastikos.blogspot.com is closed. For continuity’s sake, all of its posts and comments (to date) have been moved to the new digs, and this is the last post at the old ones. Point bookmarks and subscriptions to the new address:

rpollack.net