About Pedagogy in Practice

My name is Ben Bleckley and I am a teacher. I have a spouse of 12 years, Jennie, a seven-year-old, Fletcher, and a four-year-old, Alder.

I started this blog as an English education student at Colorado State University in 2005. My initial goals were to learn more about educational technology and its use in the classroom. It has evolved to become my own form of professional development; writing and reading education blogs makes me a better teacher. My purpose on this blog now is to write about the science of teaching English language arts.

In spring 2006 I taught eighth-grade English and seventh-grade study skills at Boltz Junior High School in Fort Collins, Colorado as a student-teacher. I returned to school in the fall to complete a linguistics class. In spring 2007 I was a substitute teacher in grades K-12 for Poudre School District.


In July 2007 I departed for South Africa where I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Schools and Community Resources Project. I helped teachers implement the government's Outcomes Based Education and Revised National Curriculum Statement, improve classroom management and instruction, and share American culture with South Africans.  In other words, I played soccer, ultimate, or blob tag [pictured] with a bunch of kids every Saturday.  You can read more about the projects Jennie and I completed at our Peace Corps blog, Jennie and Ben's Excellent Adventure.

During the 2008-2009 school year I was a temporary language arts teacher at St. Helens High School in St. Helens, Oregon, about 30 miles north of Portland along the Columbia River. I taught 9th grade language arts and 11th grade American literature half-time and continued to substitute in Portland area districts for all subjects and grade levels.

In the 2009-2010 school year I taught a literacy workshop course at St. Helens High School to incoming freshmen for three periods each morning and began my graduate degree in education and reading at Portland State University.  I taught for six years total in St. Helens School District, with brief stints at Health and Science School in Beaverton, Oregon and Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Oregon.  While I've taught language arts in all of these schools, I have also taught reading intervention in many.

To be closer to family, we moved to Colorado in the summer of 2016 and I worked for a year at Lake International School in Denver.  Since 2017, I have been working as a 9th grade language arts and reading teacher at Lakewood High School.

Thank you for visiting Pedagogy in Practice. I appreciate your readership and your comments. Feel free to send me an e-mail at benbleckley [at] gmail.com, follow me on Twitter, or be my friend on Facebook or Plurk.

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