I loved being a classroom teacher. Working with groups of teens, helping solve problems - personal, poetic and mathematical -a fire drill sounding off in the middle of a sentence - no two days were the same. But after 17 years I felt the call to explore an old passion. I knew that some of the skills I cultivated as a teacher would apply to software development, but I was wrong about which ones. I’d been interested in coding since taking a computer science course as an undergrad, and believed my long immersion in the logic of geometry and calculus would serve me. But it’s actually the people skills, the facility with group dynamics, with making sure every voice is heard and every member feels valued, that has been most essential. Software design is a team sport, and I’ve been working with groups, classes, clubs, and teams for 17 years. And though code is not poetry, there is something about the pure economy of the language - each keystroke pulling its own weight, nothing included than isn’t necessary - that brings poetry to mind. And so I find myself exactly in the right place.