About the Blog

I think everyone has that rule from childhood that seems so nonsensical now when looking back as an adult. As a 4th grade student in a small private catholic school in a suburb of New Jersey, I was always told to "underline in red". It was not mistakes in my writing, my final answer in math, nor my thesis statement in my essays that I was underlining. On every top of every paper we ever had to turn in, we had to write our name on the top left, the date on the top right (written out of course - Month, Day Year), and, in the middle of the second line down, the subject and grade that we were in. All of this was underlined in red.

To this day, I have no idea what that particular ritual meant. Was it to always highlight our heading? Was it something that our readers just had to see? Maybe the teacher just wanted to make sure we wrote it all down for grading purposes (this was the pre-computer age after all). All I know is that only a select few  teachers made us do it - the multi-generational teachers who were old enough to have taught my classmates' parents. One of them was one of the most influential educators of my life - Mrs. Czerneicki.

The title of this blog is an homage to the teacher who made sure I crossed my "t's" and dotted my "i's". She was the one who made me realize what a complete sentence looked like and helped me find out the "why" behind The Whipping Boy. I learned to answer questions as a "good little student", and I acquired a strange love for diagramming sentences. She was there to teach our class how to walk in a line and pray at the same time, and she was there when I began my rebellious and sarcastic teenage years. Even now I'm sure she would pull me by the ears for not doing my homework.

Every time I enter my name and date on a document, I mentally pull out my red pen and 6-inch straight edge plastic ruler and make sure to underline in red. Whatever I write, I take ownership for it, for writing has been an important part of my past and will be a testament to who I have become thanks to these amazing role models.

This blog is for educators, teachers, and learners. It is about my current challenge of becoming a great teacher, just like the ones before me.

~Ryan Max Ocampo