The Grumpy Old Teacher becomes the GORT, the grumpy old retired teacher.

At least I’m not the GOAT, a strange acronym that stands for greatest of all time, because the goat is someone who gets the blame when things go wrong or people are unhappy, most often undeservedly so.

But I would never claim to be the greatest, much as I would never claim to be an ally. That is something others have to decide based upon how they perceive my writing, my actions, and my motives. Nobody would think of me as the greatest, anyway.

The only thing I’ve decided about this blog is to drop the third-person voice. That was a deliberate choice to add an extra layer of separation between me and my job as a school teacher in Jacksonville, Florida, a fact I’ve never tried to hide but I didn’t make it obvious, either. That way, no one could possibly think anything I’ve written could be seen as speaking for the school district.

The blog will continue to focus on education. I keep scribbling new topics on post-it notes and slapping them on the wall, literally, the wall behind my computer where I keep all my important to-do notes.

What will be missing are the behind-the-scenes reports. As I am no longer a working teacher who can talk about what’s really going on inside the building, maybe that will be the end of the blog as those are the posts that garner the most views.

But there’s still a major job to do. I can no longer talk with students about testing and say, “It wasn’t always this way. In my day, we didn’t have annual, end-of-the-year standardized tests and my generation turned out okay. Know that school (with its curiosity-killing, soul-dampening, torture-like test prep all day long) doesn’t have to be like this. One day you will have children of your own and you can change this.”

But I can keep preaching from this platform. So, the theme song quoted in the title won’t really be true. This tin soldier will hang around for a while, not in the ivy-covered halls, but in the arena. Since the esteemed Emily Bloch, formerly with the Florida Times-Union, now writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer, always DTWD, left town, we haven’t had comprehensive coverage of the school system. The big stories are covered well–Jacksonville does have an amazing corps of local journalists–the nitty-gritty that has an impact, though, gets overlooked.

Just a thought, I’m not committing to attending all the workshops and mundane meetings of the school board, but I do have deep institutional knowledge to bring to the conversation.

So, while I’m riding away from the daily chaos and joy of bells, lessons, athletics, drama, and the like, I’m not really going anywhere. See you in the funny papers.