Everything DaN McKee: The Blog

Click on each link to read more

DaN McKee 9/9/22 DaN McKee 9/9/22

Sabbatical 1

Last week, as the summer came to end and the first week of my self-imposed unemployment loomed, I began to get nervous about what happens next. It occurred to me that it might be fun to document the journey. At first I saw a ‘zine in my mind’s eye: I would call it SABBATICAL and I would work on it every week. I would write a bit about what I did and what I was feeling, and then at the end of however long I’m not working for, I’d put it all together and put it out. I liked the idea, but then I asked myself why a ‘zine when I have this blog already, gathering dust?…

DaN McKee 4/28/21 DaN McKee 4/28/21

Teaching Myself - A New Blog

NEW BLOG ALERT

DaN McKee 12/29/20 DaN McKee 12/29/20

Obligatory 2020 Year In Review Post

“despite 2020 being the obvious poster child for an awful year, I don’t look back on it as the worst year ever. 2010 already wins that honour for me. The year my dad died unexpectedly and I became a teacher at the price of all my freedom. Or maybe 2012, the year my mom got her terminal cancer diagnosis? Or 2013, the year that she finally died? There have been worse years on a personal level and even on a global level”

DaN McKee 10/11/20 DaN McKee 10/11/20

Forced Alienation: On Being Swept Under The Rug

“I was asked by a colleague on Friday if everything was alright? They hadn’t seen me much around the school, and when they did, I didn’t seem my usual self. They said I seemed to be on my own a lot. Quiet. Not talkative. I looked like something was wrong.”

DaN McKee 9/13/20 DaN McKee 9/13/20

Observations From The Front

“It has been a week now since being thrust back into a busy school full of nearly a thousand people after six months of living safely and solitarily in lockdown. Here are some observations from the frontline of Covid 19, in one of the UK’s worst areas for infection, Birmingham, just days before we return to a stricter, nationally imposed, lockdown…”

DaN McKee 8/31/20 DaN McKee 8/31/20

To Bury Me Alive Again

“I am not merely returning to work tomorrow, I and all other teachers across the country are returning to be pawns in a political stunt that will put much of the country at great risk under the propagandist illusion of a moral imperative to get children back in school.”

DaN McKee 8/17/20 DaN McKee 8/17/20

Getting a Tattoo in the Time of Covid

“So why the tattoo? Why go to a place in close quarters with other people (albeit masked and visored) and let them cut you open, giving yourself an open wound and adding the possibility of other infection to the list of pre-existing risks in your life and risk Covid in the process? Honestly, the answer is a fuck it sense of fatalism brought about by the disregard to my, and all other teacher and students’, health and safety shown by the government.“

DaN McKee 7/22/20 DaN McKee 7/22/20

I Was Lost But Now I Am Found

“There are few positive things we can say about Covid 19, but if there is any silver lining to this ever-blackening cloud it is that the world being forced to stop for a few months gave everyone who was able to take advantage of it the opportunity to reflect.”