I hesitant to call my time working in education as a "career".
My employment record is like a preteen boy's attempt at facial hair: patchy and thinly spread. But each piece feels hard earned and prideful.
I started this blog in 2009. I was student teaching. I blazed "Both Sides of the Desk" across the page and documented my first forays into being a leader of a class as I exited from being a student myself in college. Get it? Two sides of a desk- student and teacher... I should stop explaining that; hopefully it's meaning was clear since that title perched over my lengthy musings for a good while.
Student teaching concluded. Enter 2010/2011. The "Not My Own Desk Yet" time period. I was substitute teaching, hence all my desks were borrowed, on loan from teachers with sniffles, newborns or newborns with sniffles. A bit of a week here, a smattering of a month there... It all trickled along giving me just enough to talk about at family gatherings, but not enough to make me feel purposeful as a member of society.
There more horrible days than bad days, more bad days than good days. I couldn't put together a plan for how to take this profession of teaching and turn it into... something. More than it was. The job market was abysmal. I completed a 6 week long-term sub job. The job was the most difficult task I've ever completed, for a myriad of reasons. The day after it concluded I couldn't picture myself teaching anymore.
So I quit.
Shamelessly. Completely.
Quit. I'd like to pounce upon the scoffs of others and shrill declare, "I have reasons! So many very good excuses in a variety of shapes and colors to choose from!"
I can rattle my spiel of justification as a well-rehearsed monologue. Because that's exactly what it was. I repeated "I'm tired, the administration, difficult students, horrible hours, no job future, no pay, inner city, not my passion, the state government, the national government, IS THIS WHAT I WANT FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE?" to everyone who would listen.
And my parents, bless them... let me quit.
I moved home with my parents. I got a job at a sporting goods store. I had a social life.
I ate a lot of onion rings in bars at 1am after closing the store- laughing with my coworkers and not missing morning commutes, grading tests, angry parents blaming me for their children's behavior, administration keeping track of how much paper I use in the copy machine... I had a vodka sour and friends and didn't have to be at work tomorrow till 3pm and I was 21 and happy.
I spent my paychecks on Under Armour (with my employee discount!) and gas to drive to see my boyfriend. I ate Lean Cuisines out on the store's loading dock and my left pocket liner wore through from carrying both a box cutter and a walkie-talkie every day.
I spent six months wearing sneakers to work. I didn't miss standing in heels for 10 hours just so I could be taller than my male students and scrape up some authority from height. I wore a pony-tail and fitted little boys for their first t-ball mitts and they always liked me.
My boyfriend became my fiance and I happily put my hourly paychecks away from what was now OUR future. Instead of making end-of-semester exams my coworkers and I ate starbursts in the deer blinds during our back-to-back holiday shifts and gave each other stickers for our name badges. Everyone in my family got sporting goods Christmas presents and it was the merriest I'd felt in a long time.
Spring sprung as it always does, and by summer's start I had to leave my beloved sporting goods job and go get married. So I did.
And we moved to Houston two days after the wedding.
And then what do I do? My husband is among the sharpest tools in the shed, brightest crayons in the box, whatever people say. He launched himself into his engineering job and vanished for 50 hours of the week.
Meanwhile, I got a puppy and told myself it would be perfectly acceptable to spend 6 months unpacking our little household and I couldn't possibly be expected to get a job before Christmas. It was currently July.
Unpacking boxes is not a task one can make last forever, thought I gave it my best effort. As fall (or in Houston season terms- very slightly less summer) creeped in- I knew I had to find employment.
I couldn't justify going back to retail. My year at the sporting goods store had been lightning striking just once, and I knew that. The people, the atmosphere, the work itself- I couldn't capture the magic again. I was honest with myself in acknowledging, at least in late night talks with my hubby- I was taking a time-out from life that year. I can't live in a permanent time-out, purposely not moving forward, digging in my heels and refusing to act like a grown up.
But being a grown up meant going back to teaching. And I wasn't in love with teaching. Or in "like" with teaching. Teaching and I were not speaking. We are not "facebook friends". Teaching doesn't know me. Hadn't we mutually gone our separate ways?
No.
Teaching and I didn't have a mutual break-up. I ran away from teaching when life got rough. I grappled with defining myself by my profession, if I dislike my profession do I then dislike myself?
How do I see myself in the world? As a teacher... a wife... a daughter... a person- just Jennifer? Being a teacher is something you must be with your whole self, all of your heart and efforts thrown into educating is the minimum required to be truly impactful. True teaching demands all of you given over or you can't connect to the students, they won't relate to you, you'll be cold and they will be too and everyone suffers. But the giving of myself means frequent exhaustion, both mental and physical. People "burn out" of teaching in almost the literal sense.
I eased myself back into the pool of education. I sat on the steps for awhile and mentally told myself I wouldn't drown- I'd had the training, I knew how to swim.
And then I stood in the shallow end. By that I mean I signed on with a private school as a substitute. I could say no to any job, no permanent ties. My phone started ringing, and I went back into the classroom.
It wasn't bad... wasn't horrible. There were days that were less than pleasant, but on the whole -the big picture I'm trying to teach myself to see- the children wanted to learn, the administration was nurturing and organized.
I didn't hate it.
Teaching and I were getting back together.
Almost a year and half after I quit teaching, I'm going back. I accepted a part-time position at the private school to teach Media & Yearbook and run a Study Hall program. It's not a full sweep back into totally teaching- but it's certainly more than subbing. I'll be at the school five days a week, every afternoon.
My first day of In-Service is tomorrow morning, the first day of school is the subsequent Monday. As I got ready for bed tonight, I felt very unsettled. I felt as if my ducks were not in a row, something was unchecked off the to-do list. I got all the way into bed, my husband snoring beside me, when I remembered.
This blog.
I've chronicled all of my teaching jobs/endeavors, why should this new phase pass away undocumented? My mind and heart would not let me sleep until I'd poured this piece of myself out. Now this section of my timeline has been chronicled and tucked into it's proper place, I feel I can sleep soundly.
Tomorrow is the start of something new. Something new that feels very familiar.
I'm finally ready to go back. Everything will be fine.
I do have a week's worth of cute outfits already picked out after all.
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