From the Ranch & the Desk
Essays on living books, teaching, Mother Culture, and the habit of attention.
Six years in, and I still catch myself planning for the wrong child. It happened Tuesday. Term plans all over the table, three tabs open about credit requirements, a legal pad with a column of books she is supposed to have read by the time she is no…
Read the essay →Dear former students, I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. If I could go back to my very first year teaching seventh-grade English — young, enthusiastic, and figuring it out as I went — I would do many things differently. Not because I didn’t care. I cared…
Read the essay →I used to think my years as a classroom teacher would make homeschooling easy. I had always tried to make literature come alive — starting class with soft classical music, reading together, and connecting stories to my students’ lives. I cared deeply about those lessons.
Read the essay →Let me tell you what “gentle rhythms” actually looks like in my house. It’s 9:15 and the kids are supposed to be in Bible time. Instead, one of them is upset about something that happened at co-op yesterday, another is hungry because they chose cereal for breakfast and…
Read the essay →When I returned to teaching Macbeth, I knew I didn’t want it to feel like just another dusty Shakespeare unit. I wanted it to breathe. That’s where my old loves and new rhythms have met. From my years as an English teacher and my experience having a Master’s…
Read the essay →Last week, I wrote about Waking Up to Myself—realizing that as a mother, I am also a born person, with my own mind, creativity, and passions worth tending. One of the most surprising ways I’ve been living that out is by stepping back into the classroom.
Read the essay →“I nearly forgot I was a person.” Somewhere in the middle of 16 years of diapers and dishes, meals and messes, lesson plans and laundry, I misplaced myself. Charlotte Mason once wrote, “If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these…
Read the essay →This weekend, my daughter Emma and I took a walk through the wooded creek paths near my parents’ house—paths I’ve wandered since I was ten. That landscape is stitched into me. I used to play there for hours, making up stories and naming trees, founding a one-member club…
Read the essay →Before I ever knew the name Charlotte Mason, I felt her echo. Not in textbooks. Not in theory. But in the quiet little refrain that played behind my childhood, my university years, and the early days of motherhood. Like a violin song I couldn’t quite name, it tugged…
Read the essay →Letters by Email
One unhurried letter at a time, sent through Substack.