About Me

Dan Evans is the principal at a mid-sized high school in St. Petersburg, Florida.

My Voice...
...I have found my voice many times over many years. My personal journey as a writer and thinker has been shaped by many people, some of whom I don’t even know, others whom I cannot recall. I can say with confidence that I know enough about what I believe in and how I best express myself to have a clear and distinctive voice. I also know enough to say that I cannot pinpoint an exact date and time when I finally found it. I can, though, tell you that my literacy awakening is tied a lifetime of personal awakenings. It seems that the more I learned about myself the more I became a better writer with a clearer voice. Like most, through each phase of my life, I have gained a stronger sense of what I believe in spiritually, politically, morally and philosophically. I guess you can say that I “know thyself” better now than when I was young and directionless.

That’s what reading will do for you. That’s what self-reflection will do for you.

I also know that when I was 16 years old I was just as clueless, dumbfounded, and inarticulate as the next kid. I never read anything that wasn’t assigned and I skated through my high school classes by taking every short cut possible, something that I regret to this day. I studied as little as I could, read the Cliff’s Notes whenever I could find them, and I dated a girl who was an honors student and could help me with most things. I beat the system and graduated in the middle of my class.

That all changed when I went to college, something that no one in my immediate family had ever done. I had no model for success, little money and little support. I had me. When I joined the student newspaper at the University of Florida I was awakened to a world of writing and critique that would be a model for how to teach others. The older students (who served as the newspaper’s editors) would pick apart my writing, sometimes word by word, and offer a sort of in-your-face critique that changed me from an awkward young hack to a confident, reflective story-teller.

That sort of daily critique of my writing continued after college when I worked for a couple of daily newspapers, covering everything from local government to crimes and misdemeanors. I remember specifically honing my skills around word choice, “tight” writing, metaphor, and detail. I also learned that all writing had to be interesting if I wanted anyone to read it.

I learned some of the same things when I went back to college the second time to major in English, knowing now that my calling was education (a decision that I’ve never regretted). I learned that poets and novelists wrote with the same skill-sets as journalists. I came to believe that good art is good art, no matter the canvas.

Sometimes I wrote for money, sometimes for myself. Along the way, the things I wrote started to sound like they came from “me.” I had a voice. It wasn’t until I became a teacher that I realized the role I was to play in helping young students find their own voices – not just as writers but as thinkers.

I realized that “teaching” young people to think deeper and write clearer was possible for them, just as it was for me. I showed them the “secrets” to writing and studying and learning that I was not exposed to until college. I demanded their best and, funny thing was, they were happy to oblige. Why? Because all kids want to be excellent at school and they all want to learn – even those whose outward appearances say otherwise.

How do I know? Because I was that kid.

No, I wasn’t the bad kid nor was I the good kid. I was the one in the middle, the one in the back of room who the teacher rarely called on. You could say that I was the kid in school who “defined average.” Now, as a teacher and leader, I have a life mission to re-define average. What do I mean by that? I mean that I’m naïve enough to think that we can raise our expectations for what it means to be “average.” We can expect more from all kids, especially those in the middle. We can demand that they make arguments that are well-conceived in their notions and well-articulated in their manners.

No doubt that students will struggle mightily at first as struggle is a prerequisite to learning. Still, I believe that they will learn. They will find their voices. And they will have much to say.