I finally shipped the oars on my conventional teaching career and have, like Odysseus, begun walking inland away from the sea so as to propitiate Poseidon. As of June 30 I will no longer be in my university classroom. I will transition into full-time learning and sharing and more. I wish I could have managed that more often in my classroom.
I tried at every turn to drive fear from my classrooms by crowding it out with useful work & play. I realize now that I am retiring this summer because of fear, my own fear. Technically, I quit because I got a buyout from my uni, but I would have quit anyway because of that deep, deep fear that is baked into the political and social structure of universities.
