I'm B.A.D. Teacher, M.Ed. 16+ years in urban middle school classrooms, a master's in Educational Leadership, and still teaching. I write under one banner: B.A.D. Brilliant And Dedicated. The system calls you a bad teacher the moment you stop nodding along. Fine. I'll wear it. Brilliant and dedicated aren't the opposite of bad - some days they're the same person, in the same room, refusing to shut up.

This started as a way to name what everyone in the building already knows and no one is allowed to say out loud. It turned into something bigger: a record of what happens when educators walk into systems that were never built to keep the promises made to them. I document the culture teachers actually enter, the leadership that manages up while the room falls apart, and the machinery that grinds careers into paperwork.

I write like a journalist because I was trained as one: declarative, sourced, and unwilling to look away. Periodically raw and uncut, always with tact and decorum. That's a choice, not a temper. You get honesty without the recklessness, and the institutions I write about get their own documents read back to them.

This is the record of a profession documented from the inside, by someone who stayed when leaving would've been easier.