Ms. Blakeslee's Website
Who is Ms. B?
I am an aspiring Social Studies teacher who
has come to the profession following a long, wide ranging career in
broadcast journalism. My husband and I moved to Keeseville from
Washington, D.C.
in 2004, where I had been a practicing journalist for thirty eight
exhilarating years, twenty one of them as a producer at the NewsHour
with Jim Lehrer. I had had the great fortune to begin my career a year
or so before Watergate and work with the likes of Robert MacNeil, Jim
Lehrer, Sandy Vanocur, Ted Koppel, Judy Woodruff, and many other gifted
reporters. I have done hundreds of stories on politics, the economy,
the environment, education, defense, foreign policy, and the arts.
My husband and I started to spend time in the Adirondacks in the early 90’s and made the huge decision to move here before retirement so that we would feel more a part of our community. We bought a lovely old stone house in Keeseville, and I became executive producer and head of production at Mountain Lake PBS. I left there after two years and while taking care of my parents for a number of months, I had time to seriously reflect on the next steps in my life journey. I chose to pursue a Masters in Teaching for a number of reasons. Teaching has been one of my most rewarding volunteer jobs during the last twenty years and it is in many ways similar to being a producer. Like a producer, a teacher plans ahead assiduously only to see the best laid plans fall apart. Like a journalist, a teacher is part sage, part entertainer, part guide and like the job of producing, teaching requires doing a number of things at once. I love history and Social Studies and would like to pass that on to the next generation, a long with respect for the nature of our democracy and our role as citizens.
I grew up in Windham NY in a large extended family that keeps extending. Our little town is in the Catskill Mountains which is one of the reasons my husband Jimm and I were drawn to the Adirondacks. There are mountains here, as there are in the Catskills, only here they are bigger, better, and craggier. Plus, there are also a thousand or so lakes and ponds. In Keeseville, Jimm and I live with our English setter, Kate, and three cats, Homer, Oliver, and K.T. Besides living with them, we enjoy hiking, skiing, snowshoeing, and biking together. I also garden, swim, and plan to become a proficient long distance swimmer so I can swim our many lakes and ponds. Inside, reading is a natural part of my day and I guess I am a bit of a news junkie. A day without at least checking the New York Times and the NewsHour is not quite complete
