My next teaching job

After working in New Mexico for two years, I came back to Wisconsin looking for a better paying job. I landed one in Merrill, Wisconsin, where I taught from fall 1994 to January 1999.

My first year was spent teaching English to eighth and ninth graders, The next year, our junior high became a middle school, and we changed to a "team teaching" concept. I taught English to eighth graders on the Delta Team, a five-teacher team, which I headed for four years.

During this time, I went to school during evenings at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and earned a Master's degree in English. I spent two years of night classes and summer school from fall 1996 to spring 1998 getting it done.

I also wrote a lot of short stories and even a couple of novels during this time! None of them are anything I'm particularly proud of, though each of them have their moments. It was more a lot of "practice" as I learned the craft of writing.

My years working as a teacher

You probably remember from a past entry that I mentioned I was a teacher for a few years. When I first went to college, I earned a degree in education so that I could teach English and journalism to grades 7-12. While in collegeat the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, I taught for several weeks at Park High School in Cottage Grove, Minn., under Joe Adams, the head of the English Department there.

I decided to go into journalism after graduating but then went back into teaching. From 1992-94, I taught at Deming High and Middle schools in Deming, N.M. My first year there, I was named teacher of the year at the middle school thanks to an essay written by one of my best students ever, Chris Martin Briseno.

I then moved back to my home state of Wisconsin and taught at Merrill Middle School. I mainly taught English to eighth graders. During that time, I earned a master's degree in education at UW-Stevens Point. In 1999, though, I went back into newspapering.