Changing the Blog Name

Four years ago, I left college teaching for high school teaching. Many of my friends thought I had made a bad choice. I didn’t then, and I still don’t. We all have different needs at different times in our careers. High school teaching, with its substitute teachers and regular schedule, suited me in a time when I was single-handedly raising a kindergartener and caring for a mother going through cancer treatment. I liked going to the same school with my daughter. I liked really knowing my students. I liked working with people dedicated to making children’s lives better. I liked being able to take scheduled days off to take my mother to cancer treatments. However, now that my mother is cancer-free and living on her own, and my daughter is entering the third grade, I am ready to return to the professional venue for which I was trained: the college classroom.

I’ve been hired at a local community college, where a large number of the students are first generation college students, and a number of those are single mothers. I am excited about working with all the students, but I feel I can offer something a bit special to single mothers. I know how hard it is to be a single mother, but I also know that single mothers can succeed as students and professionals. I know single mothers can make their lives and the lives of their children better. I know because I’m doing it. And I want to help other single mothers do the same.

I think, now, I can be in the academy as a single mother and a professor, when years ago it was more difficult. The book Mama PhD has made a difference in the lives of professor moms in the years since I first published Mothering in the Ivory Tower. Now, I hear reports from the front lines that suggest mothers and fathers are more accepted and supported in academia. I saw children in the offices of my new department members (something a former Chair of mine had discouraged in a memo ten years ago). My new Chair left a meeting saying that he had to take his children to the orthodontist. And I’m pleased to report that this department hired me knowing full well they were hiring a single mother. Hopefully, then, I won’t feel compelled to perform childlessness as I have in the past. I will be able to be both a single mother and a professor.

Since I am changing, I am thinking it’s time for the blog to change, as well. So, you’ll see a new title here. You’ll see more writing about my work life. You’ll see more speculating on the nature and scope of our educational system. And you’ll see me continue to explore the life of one single mother as she lives, works, and loves.