Hi. How are ya? It's been a while. I've been busy with all sorts of living and learning and growing to arrive back here to try to summarize. I plan on trying to post more here in the future, especially since there's a bit more excitement going on in my life lately, and a lot more creative endeavors. Here's a short list of what comes to mind to relate about the past months:
I'm coming up on my first wedding anniversary. This year in love has zipped right on by.
Over the summer, we moved back to Asheville. I was withering over there in Greensboro. Everything makes a lot more sense again now. Life is no longer on hold.
I am now teaching at the local community college, which is very satisfying and fulfilling for me. Thanks to my mother-in-law, I had a shoe in for that job, making me a very lucky girl in this economic climate. At least, lucky in one way.
Unfortunately, it's looking like one of the facts of my life is to be in a large amount of debt from the scholarship I went to college on. They don't care what the reason is for me not teaching in a K-12 public school, and they're coming to collect. Nevertheless, I have thought about this a lot and realized that I will just have to accept it for what it is: the result of a choice that I can't regret. I was so unhappy being away from Asheville, but now I love my life, we have an adorable little house that allows D and I both to do everything we want to do--i.e. he's setting up a recording studio downstairs, and I am setting up a martial arts training space--and I am near most of the people I care about. We are quickly building a life here, and it turns out that I really prefer teaching at the post-secondary level. There's no going back, so there's no use thinking too much anymore about what life without debt would be like. ...So, that's a rather personal situational detail. I'll spare you any more.
One other very, very important thing that has happened is that I have become passionately involved in the study of Tae Kwon Do. I suppose it has been in the works for quite some time for me to find some activity that can completely absorb me, and that combines physical, spiritual, and psychological benefits. Well, I've found it. Boy have I. It's almost frightening how much of my mental space it occupies each day. Since I found it, I've been treating it rather like my life raft, my link to fulfillment. I know, I know: danger, Will Robinson. I know. It may have a touch of pathology in it, but what doesn't? Especially when it comes to things that constitute our personal means of self-expression, the compulsive urge to obsessively learn learn learn practice practice practice create create create rarely comes from a completely quiet and sane mind. Thus, I am somewhat insanely involved in martial arts right now.
On a related topic, I'm currently writing a grant (on a volunteer basis) to create scholarships for underprivileged and at-risk kids to come to our Tae Kwon Do school. I know nothing about grant writing, but I'm determined to make it happen. Our school, Asheville Sun Soo, is truly an exceptionally good one, with a strong, intelligent leader whose integrity I wholly believe in. A scholarship program is long overdue for such an amazing program.
Another little project I'm working on is the the Art House Co-op Sketchbook Project. This is such a neat idea, and it's given me an excuse to start making art again. I hardly remembered what it was like to have an inspired idea for a composition and then carry it out on paper. It's a shame that it took this long because for my entire childhood and adolescence, making art was a daily part of life and a very familiar friend. I should just be glad that art and I are again on speaking terms, I suppose. It feels great.
Life is not all rainbows and puppies, but it's certainly a hell of a lot better than it was a few months ago, and always getting better. I hope to be posting a lot more of the fruits of my labor here. That is, if I can stand to be distracted from doing it for long enough to report about it. Ciao!
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Declaration of Chaos Control Initiative.
This is another post that proves what I mean about this blog being truly miscellaneous in nature. Personal ruminations on my life and goals right now...
I am in the midst of a crisis of self-efficacy. By which I mean that lately I lack strategies for conquering a pervasive sense of helplessness that has negatively shaped and colored my emotional, material, and real-waking-time life. (My dreams haven't been very disturbing, which is one sign to me that it isn't too late to avoid a meltdown.) I aim to get to the bottom of this and fix it before it's out of control in the kind of ways that friends, students, employers, and potential compatriots note and remark upon.
I try to avoid the language of 'destiny' and other such tricky and anti-pragmatical hocus-pocus. However, without origins and gods and cosmological speculation, I know, nevertheless, that I have important shit to do on this earth. Period. Examples: starting a free school, traveling the world, keeping my heart free from all the captivating but worthless, mediocre shit that surrounds me, and even just sticking to the lonely path of living up to my own ideals within a capitalist-military industrialist-falling empire type of society. I know that these goals and all the others require a calm and lucid subject of their enactment--i.e., little old me.
I also know that certain psychological reflexes that I exhibit in stressful situations are counterproductive to these aims. Therefore, my immediate crisis requires some immediate attention, so that I do not become so distracted by self-involved, melancholy, and anxious introspection that I lose touch with what is important about my place in the human and material world that I desire to inhabit.
My perceived source of stress and feelings of helplessness is definitely my work--as in, the work I get paid to do, teaching developmental English courses at a community college. I am very, very new at this on several levels, despite having some previous experience teaching high school English.
First of all, since Asheville, Burnsville, and rural Nash County are all full of white people, I am experiencing what I couldn't call culture shock, but rather cultural...um...adjustment? This is one aspect of the stress that I believe is quite positive. My range of intercultural exchange has expanded dramatically in the past few months I have spent in Greensboro; in addition to my born-on-American-soil students, whose skin colors and cultures vary widely, this semester I have also taught or tutored immigrants (and refugees) from Vietnam, Korea, China, Laos, India, Pakistan, Iraq, Mexico, Cuba, Sierra Leone, Togo, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Ghana. Last week, I taught a Laotian man how to use a word processor. I help new English speakers to master subject-verb agreement. I help one really old countryfied lady to develop strategies for reading and comprehending college-level texts. I help many single mothers to conquer the systems that cannot help but to stand in opposition to their dreams of giving their children a better future. The fruit of my efforts gives people confidence in new surroundings, new opportunities...
Despite the positive and even transformative experiences on that front, I feel like I am stumbling through my classes and my preparation for them every day, just trying to hang onto all the little strings that want to unravel. Unfamiliar curricula aside, my main problem is the despair and anxiety that I feel every time a new grading project comes my way, which is an almost daily event. I manage my time poorly, at least partly because of the drudgery and complication I associate with grading piles of tests or essays. My spirit revolts against the idea that this paper in front of me can tell me anything about what a student has learned! Although I am always fair and consistent about grades, I cringe every time I am required to put a big ugly number on someone's paper, especially given all the context surrounding...ugh, all of it!
I could rail all day about why I hate grading, about how it feels like trying to read vital signs from a dead rabbit, but the point is that the anxiety that this produces creates a mental block on everything else that is important to me, like planning lessons, reading books, playing music...and all I can do is fret with furrowed brow about what I "should" be doing but cannot seem to begin. This leads to lags and snags of all sorts.
With the help of my brilliant partner--my hero of the week, or lifetime, by the way--I developed a short list of guidelines for myself which do not, and cannot, address the larger issues at work here, but may be able to help me avoid falling to bits and failing in a big way.
GENERAL GUIDELINES AND PRINCIPLES FOR DISCIPLINE AND STRESS REDUCTION:
- Leave the laptop at home. Access crackbook and blogs in the early a.m. or later in the evening, when there is no work to do because I have already done it. Use the crappy school PC's for work-related stuff.
- Plan for Monday by Friday. Anxiety-free weekends are essential.
- Habit is good. It will feel unnatural until I reap the rewards, whereupon I will sing its virtues because for example, on my way to see Melt Banana in Chapel Hill, I will have no nagging worries.
- Take care of testing center business promptly, for otherwise, it is promptly forgotten.
- Remember that the purpose is also to create more time for important things like: Going to shows; lovin' on my sweet dyspeptic creatron; playing music; following through on craft projects; cooking; passing the Praxis for ESL; reading books; WRITING; planning interesting lessons for my classes and my language exchange partner; and generally creating a better world.
- Wake the fuck up and have a healthy breakfast, drink tea, and establish bearings early so I can think clearly. Make any "official" phone calls, since it makes me seem like the kind of responsible person who wakes up early to handle shit. Write unambitious but detailed to-do lists in the morning before leaving, so that the unstructured work day doesn't turn into a mess of confused half-efforts.
- Read more Kozol, radical teaching journals, etc. to stay inspired.
- Keep good, healthy, convenient food around to avoid time- and money-consuming eating habits. Soups, crackers, cheese, avocado, granola, yogurt, Larabars (yum), Thai noodle packs, pre-cut veggies, popcorn, English muffins, and nuts all come to mind.
This is what I have been able to come up with so far. Intriguing, I know. But really, it's the simple stuff that ends up mattering! I don't want to embody Benjamin Franklin's rigidly scheduled automaton fetish...but one must admit that the man was successful.
I would like to know about how all you other aspiring laziness-and-despair conquerors are doing it. ¡Digame!
Friday, September 25, 2009
What Nearly Made Me Choke on My Granola While I Was Reading This Morning.
The passive, tranquil and protected lives white people lead depend on strongly armed police, well-demarcated ghettos. While children starve and others walk the city streets in fear on Monday afternoon, the privileged young people in the Free Schools of Vermont shuttle their handlooms back and forth and speak of love and "organic processes." They do "their thing." Their thing is sun and good food and fresh water and good doctors and delightful, old and battered eighteenth-century houses, and a box of baby turtles; somebody else's thing may be starvation, broken glass, unheated rooms and rats inside the bed with newborn children. The beautiful children do not wish cold rooms or broken glass, starvation, rats or fear for anybody; nor will they stake their lives, or put their bodies on the line, or interrupt one hour of the sunlit morning, or sacrifice one moment of the golden afternoon, to take a hand in altering the unjust terms of a society in which these things are possible.
[...]
Least conscionable is when the people who are laboring and living in these schools describe themselves as revolutionaries. If this is revolution, then the men who elected Richard Nixon do not have a lot to fear. They would do well in fact to subsidize these schools and to covertly channel resources to their benefactors and supporters, for they are an ideal drain on activism and the perfect way to sidetrack ethical men from dangerous behavior.
--Jonathan Kozol
from Free Schools
----------------------------
Only two chapters in and this book is rocking my world. It was published in 1972--I feel sure Kozol would have known better than to use the proverbial but exclusionary term "men" even a couple of years later, even in the midst of such proverbial speech--but I see a very appealing present-day revolutionary potential in these ideas.
Just now there is a little voice emerging in my head, telling me, "Put 'Starting a Free School' on the ten-year plan! Scrap international travel, scrap ever making a comfortable living, scrap this bourgie bullshit about 'leisure time,' there's work to do! Call Kymber and Katie! We'll all quit our jobs and learn how to run a non-profit and everything will be amazing and we'll teach Glenwood kids, outside the system and for the righteous purpose of human-fucking-liberation, for free!" But hold on, Cooper. Not so fast.
Portrait by Robert Shetterly, www.americanswhotellthetruth.org
One of the things I love about this book so far is that it seems to employ a very elegant balance of the general and the particular to motivate and inspire, but also to instruct, in the most practical sense of the word. Most of Free Schools literally reads like an incredibly approachable instruction manual that skips over the tedious technical and legal aspects of running a nonprofit, saving those things for later discovery by the reader. Kozol occasionally wanders into helpful but essentially theoretical commentary. He makes no attempt to disguise his personal positions, and he is careful to discuss with real consideration other ways of thinking about an issue at the same time as he distances himself from them.
In the chapter titled "Power: Participation: Sanction: Legal Matters," for example, Kozol discusses the balance between radical democratic ideals and the real needs and considerations that must go into creating an effective governing body for the Free School:
Many people who go into Free Schools are so nervous about power, and so uneasy in regard to anyone who holds it, that they do not like to face the painful fact that somebody in this school, or at least some group of bodies, is going to have to make some kinds of difficult decisions. [...] The composition of the Trustee Board, and the power that it will or will not have, is therefore elemental to the entire character and oftentimes to the survival of the Free School.
He goes on to discuss the pitfalls of electing "prestigious" Trustee Boards in order to ensure popular support, as well as the problems inherent to starting out with a Board comprised of well-intentioned but weak-willed anti-authoritarian idealists who can quickly be replaced through "democracy" by power-hungry manipulators.
Clearly, these are words from the trenches. Every time I read one of his books, I get the sense of a guy who has sat down to write because he knows he is gifted with the ability and therefore the responsibility to raise awareness, capture imaginations, and change minds, but all the while, he has one eye trained on his real work, out there in real schools with real kids.
Although he has tamed his image somewhat in the past couple of decades--i.e. the appearances on national television where he firmly but politely rails against injustice--he has never really changed his mind or his message. I expect that Jonathan Kozol is one of those people who has the stamina to fight on the front lines until the very last. Furthermore, he is the kind of figure whose integrity puts to shame all of those cozy, rich University bastards like Noam Chomsky who, despite the usefulness and truth of many of their ideas, are undeniably and quite literally in the business of radical politics.
So, fuck Chomsky. I'll just keep reading my little teacher books, written by a guy who is much better at living inside his ideals.
[...]
Least conscionable is when the people who are laboring and living in these schools describe themselves as revolutionaries. If this is revolution, then the men who elected Richard Nixon do not have a lot to fear. They would do well in fact to subsidize these schools and to covertly channel resources to their benefactors and supporters, for they are an ideal drain on activism and the perfect way to sidetrack ethical men from dangerous behavior.
--Jonathan Kozol
from Free Schools
----------------------------
Only two chapters in and this book is rocking my world. It was published in 1972--I feel sure Kozol would have known better than to use the proverbial but exclusionary term "men" even a couple of years later, even in the midst of such proverbial speech--but I see a very appealing present-day revolutionary potential in these ideas.
Just now there is a little voice emerging in my head, telling me, "Put 'Starting a Free School' on the ten-year plan! Scrap international travel, scrap ever making a comfortable living, scrap this bourgie bullshit about 'leisure time,' there's work to do! Call Kymber and Katie! We'll all quit our jobs and learn how to run a non-profit and everything will be amazing and we'll teach Glenwood kids, outside the system and for the righteous purpose of human-fucking-liberation, for free!" But hold on, Cooper. Not so fast.
Portrait by Robert Shetterly, www.americanswhotellthetruth.org
One of the things I love about this book so far is that it seems to employ a very elegant balance of the general and the particular to motivate and inspire, but also to instruct, in the most practical sense of the word. Most of Free Schools literally reads like an incredibly approachable instruction manual that skips over the tedious technical and legal aspects of running a nonprofit, saving those things for later discovery by the reader. Kozol occasionally wanders into helpful but essentially theoretical commentary. He makes no attempt to disguise his personal positions, and he is careful to discuss with real consideration other ways of thinking about an issue at the same time as he distances himself from them.
In the chapter titled "Power: Participation: Sanction: Legal Matters," for example, Kozol discusses the balance between radical democratic ideals and the real needs and considerations that must go into creating an effective governing body for the Free School:
Many people who go into Free Schools are so nervous about power, and so uneasy in regard to anyone who holds it, that they do not like to face the painful fact that somebody in this school, or at least some group of bodies, is going to have to make some kinds of difficult decisions. [...] The composition of the Trustee Board, and the power that it will or will not have, is therefore elemental to the entire character and oftentimes to the survival of the Free School.
He goes on to discuss the pitfalls of electing "prestigious" Trustee Boards in order to ensure popular support, as well as the problems inherent to starting out with a Board comprised of well-intentioned but weak-willed anti-authoritarian idealists who can quickly be replaced through "democracy" by power-hungry manipulators.
Clearly, these are words from the trenches. Every time I read one of his books, I get the sense of a guy who has sat down to write because he knows he is gifted with the ability and therefore the responsibility to raise awareness, capture imaginations, and change minds, but all the while, he has one eye trained on his real work, out there in real schools with real kids.
Although he has tamed his image somewhat in the past couple of decades--i.e. the appearances on national television where he firmly but politely rails against injustice--he has never really changed his mind or his message. I expect that Jonathan Kozol is one of those people who has the stamina to fight on the front lines until the very last. Furthermore, he is the kind of figure whose integrity puts to shame all of those cozy, rich University bastards like Noam Chomsky who, despite the usefulness and truth of many of their ideas, are undeniably and quite literally in the business of radical politics.
So, fuck Chomsky. I'll just keep reading my little teacher books, written by a guy who is much better at living inside his ideals.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Why I Teach
When people ask me what I do for a living, the conversations that follow are often very similar. A typical transcript might read like this:
Me: I’m a teacher.
Acquaintance: Oh, really? Elementary school?
Me: No. High school, actually.
Acquaintance: Really? You’re so petite and you look so young...don’t they take advantage of you?
Me: Um, no. I wouldn’t say so. I show them respect, I make my expectations clear, and so they tend to treat me with respect in kind. I love my kids.
Acquaintance: Well, what grades or subjects do you teach?
Me: English and Journalism. I get a little from all four grade levels.
Acquaintance: Oh, neat. I just wouldn’t have expected that. Do you teach at Asheville High?
Me: No. Yancey County, up north of Asheville.
(look of incomprehension from the acquaintance)
You know where Burnsville is?
Acquaintance: Oh, all the way up there? I went hiking up that way once. Are there lots of rednecks?
Me: That’s not exactly how I would describe them, but you could say that. Some identify with that title. Actually, though, my students are the most open-minded group I’ve ever encountered, even though I substituted last year in the city.
Acquaintance: Really? Interesting. That’s not what I would have assumed. I could never do what you do, but I really respect it. Teaching is such a noble profession...
I continue to be floored by the fact that even intelligent, educated people seem content to use the cliché. I hate the sound of it. It doesn’t make me angry anymore, but I admit that I have felt like saying snarky things to people for dropping that bomb. “Noble.” Bah!
First of all, it makes my job sound like an unpleasant labor of love, involving some kind of heroic sacrifice. This is not what teaching means to me. Teaching is exciting and interesting and endlessly creative. A variation on the above transcript might contain my oft-repeated assertion that I chose to teach partly because there is nothing less boring in the world to do all day long.
For instance, while people my age toil away for tip money and stay up late drinking and making idle conversation with other bored twentysomethings, I stay up late planning lessons that will hopefully get a room full of ninth graders excited about something, or push a group of standard seniors to do honors level work without even realizing that they are exceeding the usual expectations for their “demographic.” Part of my job is to inspire young people to realize their immense potential. What could be more fun and challenging? I’ve put in my time waiting tables and running cash registers, and I still respect that work. Nevertheless, there are few things more mind-numbing than that kind of alienated labor. Call me restless or stimulation-needy, but that life isn’t enough for me.
Furthermore, although I admit to sometimes losing sleep worrying about students, I find teaching to be particularly well-suited to a healthy, balanced, well-rounded life. Since there is always more grading to do, more paperwork to fret about, or somebody in authority who wants something from you, the ubiquity of stress and pressure make it all the more important to keep a healthy psychological distance. If a new teacher values her profession, she must find ways to cope with stress; usually, this means staying in touch with all the things she enjoyed before becoming a teacher, as well as any new interests that come along. This is the only way to prevent losing one’s proverbial marbles, and is therefore an important aspect of being an effective teacher. How could an anxious, unfulfilled, psychologically unavailable person really expect to inspire anyone?
For me, this means reserving time on most weekends to see my friends’ bands play, take walks in the woods, read books, write in my journal, or have long, ponderous conversations with loved ones. I try to make sure that by the end of the weekend, I have had the chance to fully reset myself for the week ahead. This is as essential to my success in the classroom as doing research or grading essays.
I haven’t always felt so positive about my career—I had to go through a long period of turbulent ambivalence to get to this point. When I first found out in the twelfth grade that I had won the Teaching Fellows scholarship, my stomach must have flipped over in my guts. I thought that it must have been some kind of mistake. First of all, I could hardly believe that this stuffy, impeccably dressed group of retired teachers—my interview panelists—would have favored me over all those sweet-faced, agreeable, average-looking girls who love little children and who probably talked about how teaching is such a “noble profession” in their interviews.
I had walked into my interview with a shaved head and a chip on my shoulder, talking about how the concrete prison cells we call classrooms are actually the worst possible places for people to learn anything valuable, and how American school systems are no longer equipped to respond to the demands of our changing society. I walked out of the conference room congratulating myself for doing such a good job ensuring that no one would ever compel me to teach in a public school.
I shuddered at the idea, really. I had been to Governor’s School in the summer before my eleventh grade year, where my mind was irrevocably opened to worlds of possibilities I had never considered before. I thought that I would surely become an artist, or perhaps a political activist, when I grew up. Everyone else expected something of the sort from me, too. Teaching seemed to me like something people do when they can’t do anything else, or when they have become so complacent that they can be satisfied with a confining, highly localized sphere of influence. (Was I ever in for a shock!)
Applying for the Teaching Fellows scholarship had been something that an adviser persuaded me to do as a backup plan, to which I had only grudgingly conceded, all the while feeling absolutely certain that it would not, could not happen. Yet, through round after round of applications and tests, my name kept appearing on the list of finalists.
And then I got the letter. There was no hiding the results from my parents, who had been waiting eagerly for the envelope with the blue star logo to appear in the mailbox. (They had hoped to be able to invest some of the money they would save on my expenses to open a restaurant, which they did the very next year.)
I tore open the envelope and read the first word, “Congratulations,” and immediately dissolved into tears. I had been duped! My plan to avoid teaching by telling the truth in my interview had failed! What could it mean? Could these old stiffs and bureaucrats actually want to see real change happen in public education? It ran contrary to my whole belief system. Clearly, this was the first of an ongoing series of surprises. Here I am now, a teacher in a tiny farm town just like the one I ran away from years ago, and I can honestly say that I feel excited to go back to work each Monday.
Me: I’m a teacher.
Acquaintance: Oh, really? Elementary school?
Me: No. High school, actually.
Acquaintance: Really? You’re so petite and you look so young...don’t they take advantage of you?
Me: Um, no. I wouldn’t say so. I show them respect, I make my expectations clear, and so they tend to treat me with respect in kind. I love my kids.
Acquaintance: Well, what grades or subjects do you teach?
Me: English and Journalism. I get a little from all four grade levels.
Acquaintance: Oh, neat. I just wouldn’t have expected that. Do you teach at Asheville High?
Me: No. Yancey County, up north of Asheville.
(look of incomprehension from the acquaintance)
You know where Burnsville is?
Acquaintance: Oh, all the way up there? I went hiking up that way once. Are there lots of rednecks?
Me: That’s not exactly how I would describe them, but you could say that. Some identify with that title. Actually, though, my students are the most open-minded group I’ve ever encountered, even though I substituted last year in the city.
Acquaintance: Really? Interesting. That’s not what I would have assumed. I could never do what you do, but I really respect it. Teaching is such a noble profession...
I continue to be floored by the fact that even intelligent, educated people seem content to use the cliché. I hate the sound of it. It doesn’t make me angry anymore, but I admit that I have felt like saying snarky things to people for dropping that bomb. “Noble.” Bah!
First of all, it makes my job sound like an unpleasant labor of love, involving some kind of heroic sacrifice. This is not what teaching means to me. Teaching is exciting and interesting and endlessly creative. A variation on the above transcript might contain my oft-repeated assertion that I chose to teach partly because there is nothing less boring in the world to do all day long.
For instance, while people my age toil away for tip money and stay up late drinking and making idle conversation with other bored twentysomethings, I stay up late planning lessons that will hopefully get a room full of ninth graders excited about something, or push a group of standard seniors to do honors level work without even realizing that they are exceeding the usual expectations for their “demographic.” Part of my job is to inspire young people to realize their immense potential. What could be more fun and challenging? I’ve put in my time waiting tables and running cash registers, and I still respect that work. Nevertheless, there are few things more mind-numbing than that kind of alienated labor. Call me restless or stimulation-needy, but that life isn’t enough for me.
Furthermore, although I admit to sometimes losing sleep worrying about students, I find teaching to be particularly well-suited to a healthy, balanced, well-rounded life. Since there is always more grading to do, more paperwork to fret about, or somebody in authority who wants something from you, the ubiquity of stress and pressure make it all the more important to keep a healthy psychological distance. If a new teacher values her profession, she must find ways to cope with stress; usually, this means staying in touch with all the things she enjoyed before becoming a teacher, as well as any new interests that come along. This is the only way to prevent losing one’s proverbial marbles, and is therefore an important aspect of being an effective teacher. How could an anxious, unfulfilled, psychologically unavailable person really expect to inspire anyone?
For me, this means reserving time on most weekends to see my friends’ bands play, take walks in the woods, read books, write in my journal, or have long, ponderous conversations with loved ones. I try to make sure that by the end of the weekend, I have had the chance to fully reset myself for the week ahead. This is as essential to my success in the classroom as doing research or grading essays.
I haven’t always felt so positive about my career—I had to go through a long period of turbulent ambivalence to get to this point. When I first found out in the twelfth grade that I had won the Teaching Fellows scholarship, my stomach must have flipped over in my guts. I thought that it must have been some kind of mistake. First of all, I could hardly believe that this stuffy, impeccably dressed group of retired teachers—my interview panelists—would have favored me over all those sweet-faced, agreeable, average-looking girls who love little children and who probably talked about how teaching is such a “noble profession” in their interviews.
I had walked into my interview with a shaved head and a chip on my shoulder, talking about how the concrete prison cells we call classrooms are actually the worst possible places for people to learn anything valuable, and how American school systems are no longer equipped to respond to the demands of our changing society. I walked out of the conference room congratulating myself for doing such a good job ensuring that no one would ever compel me to teach in a public school.
I shuddered at the idea, really. I had been to Governor’s School in the summer before my eleventh grade year, where my mind was irrevocably opened to worlds of possibilities I had never considered before. I thought that I would surely become an artist, or perhaps a political activist, when I grew up. Everyone else expected something of the sort from me, too. Teaching seemed to me like something people do when they can’t do anything else, or when they have become so complacent that they can be satisfied with a confining, highly localized sphere of influence. (Was I ever in for a shock!)
Applying for the Teaching Fellows scholarship had been something that an adviser persuaded me to do as a backup plan, to which I had only grudgingly conceded, all the while feeling absolutely certain that it would not, could not happen. Yet, through round after round of applications and tests, my name kept appearing on the list of finalists.
And then I got the letter. There was no hiding the results from my parents, who had been waiting eagerly for the envelope with the blue star logo to appear in the mailbox. (They had hoped to be able to invest some of the money they would save on my expenses to open a restaurant, which they did the very next year.)
I tore open the envelope and read the first word, “Congratulations,” and immediately dissolved into tears. I had been duped! My plan to avoid teaching by telling the truth in my interview had failed! What could it mean? Could these old stiffs and bureaucrats actually want to see real change happen in public education? It ran contrary to my whole belief system. Clearly, this was the first of an ongoing series of surprises. Here I am now, a teacher in a tiny farm town just like the one I ran away from years ago, and I can honestly say that I feel excited to go back to work each Monday.
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