Big Decisions Made for All the Wrong Reasons

My wonderful student teacher, Nozsa, has spent the past two weeks taking full responsibility for our classroom. This means she has done the planning, the prep, and all the teaching. Minus a few district tests, a visit from grandparents, and a few observations, she has been in the classroom alone for the past ten days. I remember my own experiences as a student teacher during those two weeks. They were so exciting yet also tiring. Very tiring. I think her experience was very similar.

During her two weeks I've been out of the classroom writing progress reports, doing homework, prepping for my undergrads, and planning for the final seven weeks of school. I've also spent time building relationships with a few people I don't normally get to see all that often.

It's been nice, but long. Too long.

During these two weeks I've not slept very well and have had trouble working up much of an appetite. In fact, I've felt kind of nauseous. And anxious. I tried to attribute this to a number of possible stressers but I finally figured out it was because being out of my classroom disrupted my normal routine - and feelings of accomplishment and fulfillment. Over twelve years of teaching I've come to measure my days by the conversations I have with my kids. The books we read together. The one-liners they deliver at the lunch table. The heated games of dodge ball on the playground. The giggles and hugs at carpool.

For the last two weeks I traded this all in for a game of filling time. And filling time stinks.

However, I'm glad Nozsa had this awesome opportunity to live the life of a teacher for a few weeks. What she learned was invaluable. Soon she will graduate, hopefully find a classroom to call her own, and begin a long and beautiful career. And she'll know right away that she's made the right choice.

Tomorrow the boys and I are headed into the woods of North Carolina for four days of hiking. Since I won't be able to post a new story this weekend I'm going to repost a piece I wrote about four or five years ago about the very moment I chose to become an elementary teacher. I wish it were more flattering. I wish it were more inspirational. At the very least I wish I could say "And that's the girl I married!" But alas, sometimes the destination really is more important than the journey. I know in this case it sure was.

Enjoy.

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Some decisions should really be made carefully. Where to live. Who to marry. What career to pursue. These are all decisions that will stay with you for some time. Sure, any of them can be changed - but not without a reasonable amount hassle and paperwork.

Take for instance what career to pursue. I’ve read that the average American changes careers at least three or four times in their lifetime. That’s a lot. When I was seven years old I was pursuing a career in professional baseball. When my nephew was a few years younger than that he was considering a career as a shark. Not a card shark or even a loan shark. A great white shark. I’m not sure what training would be involved in such an endeavor but I can only imagine there would be a good deal of swimming and learning to eat without chewing. He was not much of a swimmer at the time but the eating thing he had down cold.

I can’t imagine that these are the types of career pursuits they are taking into account, though, when coming up with that surprisingly large ratio. How does this happen? Each year the teachers in my school work with student interns in the Masters in Teaching (MAT) program from the University of South Carolina. These are people who have earned a degree in another field only to find that they would rather be in a classroom. Some come from business backgrounds while others come from medical or communications or science degrees. I can understand this- starting a career, finding out it doesn’t quite suit you, and going back to school for a year or two so that you can switch to something you find more fulfilling. But three or four times?

Still, choosing a career is a very important, even if not binding, decision that should be made with care. This occurred to me a few days ago as I was driving down the road and passed Family Video. Nestled into one of the latest strip malls to pop up near our house, Family Video has been open for about a year or so. On the sign out front it read:

Need a career?

How does $32,000 sound?

Manager needed.

A career.

A career?

Doesn’t the word career imply long term employment? Really long – like with a retirement plan and everything? Doesn’t the word career make you think of a place from which you’ll one day retire?  Somewhere where you expect to someday be offered a host of smiles, good wishes, and handshakes as you tote your box out the door on your way to a life of grandkids, gardening, and travel.

No, I don’t see Family Video as a career. With the wildly popular, and convenient,  DVD machines in places like McDonalds and WalMart, not to mention the industry dominance of Netflix, I can’t see Family Video stopping by the Piggly Wiggly to pick up a retirement cake for anyone in the distant future. Looking for lasting employment at a video store makes about as much sense as becoming a plant manager at a factory making telephone chords. Or looking to build a fortune selling 35 mm film. Or selling discounted Walkmans on a corner.

It just doesn’t make sense.

I love my career. I don’t even see it so much as work. Sure there’s plenty of work involved as I spend many nights and weekends planning, reading, writing, and preparing. But more than anything I see teaching as a paid hobby. If someone were to hand me a winning lottery ticket I’m certain I’d be back in my classroom the next day. And thousands of days beyond that.

I’m lucky to do something so important to me. I’d like to say that this was all carefully constructed. I’d like to say that I made this decision very carefully. I’d like to say that there was no randomness.

But there was.

After messing around with journalism (for one semester) and music (for two), I jumped into the education program. Despite being a mediocre student, I had always loved school. I had an aunt in Arkansas that was a teacher. My grandpa used to talk about her all the time. We didn’t have a lot of college graduates in our family and the small collection of those who had received degrees had become teachers. In some ways, they seemed to be a source of family pride. So somewhere along the way the idea of becoming a teacher had occurred to me.

That part of the story makes sense. Teaching was, in a way, a family vocation and I was following in someone’s footsteps. Even if I hadn’t ever actually seen the souls making those footsteps.

So by the end of my sophomore year at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville I found myself in an introductory course designed to provide an overview of educational issues. The class met twice a week in a very large room with theater-style seating. I generally sat near the top – when I showed up at all. The class was anything but challenging. Or even interesting. As much as I’d like to blame the professor, I was more interested at the time in sleeping late or playing pool than learning. This was something that I fortunately outgrew very soon.

 On the final day of class the professor explained to us that we would have to declare which program we were planning to enter – elementary or secondary. I had never, for a single moment, considered this. Grade school or high school? I had no clue. Suddenly it occurred to me that I hadn’t really invested myself in the idea of being a teacher. I had no idea what I would want to teach or even what types of kids I might work with each day. To be honest, I really didn’t even have much of an idea what being a teacher would entail beyond assigning homework and keeping a grade book.

The professor then proceeded to tell us that she’d first pass out the necessary paperwork for those planning to enroll in the secondary program and then come around with the elementary forms. It seemed this was a decision that needed to be made quickly. As in the next two minutes.

My mind raced.

If this were a normal day I would have had a few more moments to stall. Had I been sitting near the top of the room it would take these forms significantly longer to reach me. Perhaps long enough to put together some thread of intelligent thought. Long enough to make a somewhat informed decision. But I wasn’t sitting near the top. As fate would have it, this particular day I had seen a really pretty girl walking just in front of me as I entered the auditorium. I followed and sat next to her planning to either talk to her or make her uncomfortable with disturbingly long and intense staring. Whether we spoke during much of that class I don’t remember. I do remember, however, her turning to me and asking which form I needed.

“Uh,” I stammered. “I…I…I’m not sure.”

“You don’t know what you want to teach?” she asked.

“What?”  I asked. I hoped to confuse her.

“Do you know which level you’re applying for?”

“Oh yeah,” I assured her. “Which are you doing?”

“Elementary,” she answered.

“Huh, me too!”