Skip to content
TJ Wilson
Menu
  • About
  • Writings Elsewhere
Menu

Author: Thomas Joseph Wilson

ELA Is a Tech Class

Posted on April 10, 2022April 12, 2022 by Thomas Joseph Wilson

A Technology I am the teacher of a technology class; I am an unacknowledged STEM teacher; I am an English Language Arts teacher. This is a cute way to start an essay, but, seriously, the “Arts” part does a good job of camouflaging the core of ELA. And that core is learning how to use…

Continue reading

Semester of Slow

Posted on March 13, 2022March 13, 2022 by Thomas Joseph Wilson

Virtual Tools, Real Classroom When you are stressed, practicality is a religion. At the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, after we went totally virtual when the pandemic hit in March 2020, I was a bit unsettled. We were all starting to live with the virus. Still, the memory of full-on pandemic anxiety–memories like studiously…

Continue reading

A Modest Seat in the Classroom

Posted on March 6, 2022March 7, 2022 by Thomas Joseph Wilson

Age and the “New Tech” Fallacy Fourteen years ago, when I was a student-teacher and still using a personal computer hijacked to run Linux instead of Windows, I did a lot of campaigning for Google Docs. This was wasted effort: Google conquers better than its creators. When I was officially hired as a licensed teacher,…

Continue reading

Pushed Up a Mountain

Posted on February 6, 2022February 6, 2022 by Thomas Joseph Wilson

I. My Brazilian friend had never seen snow. I couldn’t fathom such a perspective, watching him gawk out the window of the bus that was driving us from the airport to a hotel in Switzerland. We all lived in England, attending the same American school, though many of us were not American. It was February,…

Continue reading

Tybee Tides

Posted on January 24, 2022January 25, 2022 by Thomas Joseph Wilson

Floating Specks Large swells of water bobbed the boat as it made its way out into brackish water of Tybee Creek. The Atlantic horizon before them was interrupted by one last mass of land that was their destination–Tybee Island proper, with its popular shops and beach. Lisa and Greg Smith normally wouldn’t have gone out…

Continue reading

The Neighborhood Anarchists

Posted on January 17, 2022January 25, 2022 by Thomas Joseph Wilson

I. No one needs to ask the origin of my neighborhood’s name: Deer Park. Deer walk the streets of Deer Park, Ohio, like humans have yet to take over. They are the living ghosts of nature, sleeping in front yards, staring at you with a tense readiness when you walk past. The penance the deer…

Continue reading

Solid Things

Posted on January 9, 2022January 25, 2022 by Thomas Joseph Wilson

When the Paperless Movement was in full force, I was fatalistic. Going totally digital was inevitable. And like anyone who needs to prepare for a new world, I started readying my supplies, or, in this case, getting rid of them. As we now know, the Paperless Movement didn’t quite take. Though cardboard boxes are the…

Continue reading

Mid-Career Teaching Revelation

Posted on January 2, 2022January 25, 2022 by Thomas Joseph Wilson

I got into teaching because I was an educational rebel. I was a late bloomer, and while I was a curious person interested in many things, I didn’t put much stock into formal education. I blinded myself to keeping my eyes open for anything by keeping my eyes open to only a bubble’s worth of…

Continue reading

In Question: Technology Scoffing

Posted on December 28, 2021January 25, 2022 by Thomas Joseph Wilson

Link to the explanation of this series. I watched a teenager, probably the same age as some of the students I teach, raise their camera up, thumb tapping the screen, and pan it around the cascading lights swirling around on the building in front of us. “There’s another one,” I thought. The teenager wasn’t alone….

Continue reading

In Question: Introduction

Posted on December 27, 2021January 25, 2022 by Thomas Joseph Wilson

As a high school English teacher, I’m always wondering what my writing hobby has to do with my job. Yes, I do all of the stereotypical things an English teacher does: tries to write novels and short stories, tries to write essays that may be of note somewhere, reads as if our eyes evolved to…

Continue reading
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Next
TJ Wilson is an English Teacher who writes on the side.
  • Autobiographical
  • Essay
  • In Question
  • Nonfiction
  • Teaching
  • Uncategorized
  • Whimsy

Internet Presence

  • Twitter
  • Instagram

Subscribe to These Writings

© 2022 TJ Wilson | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme