I'm one of those people who nailed school. Like, hardcore, it was my thing, I sailed through it and I set myself challenges when things felt too easy/tedious. One example: I was the first person to ever test out of English 11. Frankly, I think I was the first person to ever request to test out of English 11. It conflicted with another class I wanted to take, so I just spent maybe a month or so that summer reading through all of the books and stories and then took a bunch of tests at the beginning of the year and that was that. Math was my weakest area and I still finished calculus in my senior year with some form of B (that year I also had AP English and music theory/music history, for which I came to school an hour before the normal start time to take it via distance learning; that was my third year in a row of taking what was called a "zero-hour" class that met before school started). I was involved in easily a dozen extracurricular activities across 8 semesters of high school, and held a very part-time job in my senior year (ten hours per week closing for a preschool classroom at a local daycare center). In college, I was nearly as engaged, even if I did spend an awful lot of time flailing around for a major. The problem was, when I graduated, I had spent 18 years basically following the school script, and when I was ejected out into the real world, I hit this very strange vortex of feeling at loose ends combined with feeling my future tunneling down to years of corporate sterility. And then I spent the next 7 years trying to figure out what to do with my life, and then 2 more years trying to figure out how to square my personal philosophies about education with the jobs I was taking. Remember when I said I've had 12 jobs in the past 10 years (not counting the couple of stints of being a SAHP)? Yeah.
So, I've really struggled to figure out how to adult adequately without the scaffolding of following a step-by-step guide to other people's expectations of me. Which, hint hint, is where a lot of my personal philosophy of education came from: I realized how gross it was that I could be so successful following the script that was laid out for me, and then fall so flat on my face in crossing the finish line when I was suddenly expected to figure out my own path in adulthood. It seemed to me that academic intelligence didn't actually equate to success in adulthood if I was struggling so badly to figure out what I was doing. And when I finally veered back into teaching a little over 5 years ago, I entered via a two-year stint at a private Montessori school after tutoring some of the middle school students. I spent a couple of summers, in and around foster care and getting pregnant and having a second baby, attending a Montessori teacher training program in Cincinnati, which continues to be hands-down the best teacher training program I've ever had the privilege to attend. And then I decided to take the full plunge and become a state certified teacher through an alternate route program, which grants an interim certificate for up to five years to people with at least a bachelor's degree in another area who complete a certain number of core courses and pass the state exam in their endorsement area(s). Being an overachiever and also paranoid that I wouldn't get a job with just one endorsement area, I ended up taking and passing five tests, so that for two years I taught on an elementary (1) certificate with endorsements in math (2), science (3), social studies (4), and health (5).
And then I started teaching in a "real" school...and I hated it. So I found another job three months later...and I hated it, too. The schools were public charters (this will be a whole separate post for another time) and the amount of resources available to me varied, as did the amount of support I received as a new teacher. But, basically, I felt like I was being thrown to the wolves every single day and expected to deal with it while also preparing those wolves for standardized exams that would determine my adequacy as a teacher. It would not be hyperbole to say that I nearly got to a point where I wanted to kill myself. I was crying every night thinking of having to go back to work in the morning. I was literally hiding under my desk with the lights off during my prep period (on days when I had a prep period), trying not to panic about having to teach again in less than an hour. This was what I had been so excited to do?? And if I couldn't hack this...what the hell else was I supposed to do with my life?? I had to work; going back to school had boxed me into the debt corner, and now we had a house and two babies, as well. There was no option to go back to staying home, even if I had wanted to continue doing that. Quitting the second job in 6 months felt really scary - it had to be the last move I made, or I believed I was seriously risking any other school taking a chance on me in the future (given the current teacher shortage crisis in Michigan, this was probably an inaccurate belief, but I felt like enough of a flake already that I did not like the idea of continuing to trash my image). There was a school at a residential treatment center that had posted earlier in the year for a middle school teacher, and I had considered applying, but didn't, and then it had closed. But in the middle of my second school crisis, the position opened again. I called the school and inquired about the spot. The administrative assistant encouraged me to apply; I did, holding my breath the entire time. Then the principal called me and asked if I was looking for something now or if I was looking to wait until the fall. I admitted that, if necessary, I would stick it out where I was, but I was really looking for something that would start immediately. She asked me if I could interview on a particular date. I agreed. On that morning, I spilled coffee on my shirt during my drive, and wound up buying a new sweater at Burlington, thanking my lucky stars that I had taken the day off from work altogether and had the cushion built in. I went to the interview, we chatted about my philosophy and my views on classroom management and trauma and student behaviors, I spent some time in the middle school classroom observing and speaking with the teacher whom I would work alongside if I were hired, and an hour or so after I had left the interview, I received a phone call and an offer. On March 5th, I started working in my first alternative school, and it was there, where the behaviors and the needs were even more intense than they'd been in my first two classrooms, that I fell in love with alternative education.
If I'm being honest, alternative education was something I had thought about for some time, though never with any serious intent. From the time I read Helen Keller's Teacher and wrote about my mysterious plan for teaching students with special needs, that idea of working with some population outside of the traditional general ed students had nestled in the back of my mind and always got a little stirred up whenever I thought about becoming a teacher. I had even considered going into special education, and might have, if it weren't one of just two endorsement areas that require a whole degree in order to be certified in it - I didn't have the money to pursue a master's degree. Now that I've had some experience in the education field, I would not choose special education, but I admire anyone who is willing to write that many reports and legal documents on top of working directly with students with special needs. Special education teachers deal with a lot of stuff that I don't have to worry about as the gen ed teacher, and thank goodness for them for that. Anyway, alternative education had entered my orbit in early 2014 or so when Kiddo was struggling at the local public high school and we decided to transfer him over to the alternative high school to see if a smaller learning community might be more beneficial for him. At that time, I wasn't yet teaching at the Montessori, but was tutoring privately in the evenings and spending the days home with Froggy, so I was often available to handle school things for Kiddo, as well, and I found the alternative school intriguing. We ended up transferring him back to the regular high school after a short period because they had more ESL resources than the alternative school did, but the experience there joined that little nesting niggle in the back of my brain. Scoring the job at the residential treatment center pinged every little piece of me that had been yearning for a non-traditional teaching job before taking and since leaving the Montessori school. It was hard, it was challenging, it was disheartening (that was mostly due to receiving, in my second year of teaching, a "does not meet expectations" on my evaluation from my newly-assigned supervising instructor with my alternate route program when she came to conduct my first observation), and it was incredibly fulfilling. My days felt renewed with a sense of purpose. I didn't love waking up as early in the morning as I had to in order to get Froggy to school before I had to report for work - it was over an hour of commuting every morning, and the same in the evening - but I loved seeing my kids every day. The only major struggle I had was with the culture of mistrust between the staff and administration; even if I hadn't had to leave in order to pursue Stargazer's adoption, it's almost certain that I would have been looking for something else for this school year, anyway. But I would have finished out the school year if the timing had worked out that way. Unlike the first two schools, this one never felt like a place I would desperately flee from in the middle of the school year.
One of the toughest things, of course, about being a teacher is the amount of work that ends up coming home with you. I think that I managed to reduce my workload a little bit each year that I taught. Partly it was due to having more experience with what was necessary to work on at home ahead of time and what I could reasonably accomplish on prep and before and after school during my contract time, but mostly it had to do with choosing positions that just didn't require as much prep work. Having solid work-life balance is one of those things that people talk about but which seems really elusive as a teacher, even with experience and prep time. After I left the residential school, I went back to a traditional school, where I hated my life and had no time for my family in the evenings if I wanted to be an adequate teacher. I knew I couldn't go back to that. I could feel the crushing pressure of years of excruciating day-in, day-out teacher life agony tunneling down on me again. The panic started to set in once more: What was I going to do with my life if this was what I was forced to do and I hated it so much? I had an elementary certificate. The odds of finding another middle school job in alternative education was very slim; most programs are for high school students, and I couldn't teach high school on my license. I spent the summer applying to other middle school positions - on the plus side, I had narrowed down my field of interest to science only, so I was ignoring all of my other endorsements - and doing interviews. And then I poked around to see what kinds of high school jobs were open. One was an opening at an alternative school. For a science teacher. On the one hand, I couldn't teach there on my current license. On the other hand...I could go back into the program and start again on a secondary certification. I could apply to this position, and the worst case scenario was that I would explain that I wasn't actually technically qualified for it but was willing to do what I needed to do to become qualified for it and they would ignore my application and choose somebody else. I found myself holding my breath again as I put together my cover letter, my resume, and my application. I waited. I heard nothing. So I went on applying to other jobs. And then, about three weeks later, I got a call. Well, I got two calls. I got a call to interview for a middle school science position at one school, for which I was already qualified, and then I got a call to discuss the high school science position. The lady asked if I would be interested in hearing more about it, so we talked for a little while. Then she asked if I would still be interested in interviewing with the superintendent now that I knew more about the position. My heart leaped. Yes!! Maybe we could make it work!!
The middle school called back first after both interviews were over. Honestly, it had not been a great interview and I was positive the offer was going to someone else. The high school one had gone much better, and the superintendent had just about said everything except that the job was mine if I wanted it, but it had been a few days and I was feeling less certain about it. I told the middle school that I would think about it, but that I was expecting a call from another school, as well, and could make a better decision once I knew what I was working with. Fortunately, barely an hour later, the superintendent called me, thanked me for a wonderful interview, and offered me the job with the highest salary I'd ever made in my life. I accepted, and then I put in my application to start the alternate route program all over again. I was able to teach my first semester on a permit; I finished my core classes in December, and last week I received my new official state certification.
But the best part isn't even the salary, although I can't say it hasn't been a welcome relief to have finally reached a point in our adult lives where T-Rox and I aren't stressing out about all the bills every month, and where, at 33, I'm finally starting to feel like I'm contributing something of value to our financial and familial stability (bless him, he's dealt with being married to this hot mess for the past decade and counting, and hasn't had a mental breakdown yet). The best part is that my alternative school uses a virtual curriculum. Students earn credits by completing online classes while they're on campus, and with the exception of one period of "live" (face-to-face, teacher-led) class, I don't have to do any lesson planning. Grading is built into the curriculum, so while I do have to do some grading by hand, the volume is low enough that I can get it done while I'm at work. Occasionally I bring some stuff home over the weekend to catch up on organization and keep track of where my students are in their classes, but it's not often that I do that.
Over the last decade, I've spent a lot of time questioning my purpose, the point of having gone to college, and my ability to adult properly. I've spent a lot of time comparing myself to my peers, most of whom have gone on to successful, stable careers where they are both advancing themselves and are up to 10 years closer to retirement than I am because it's taken me so darn long to shove myself into a career path in the first place. My adult life to date has felt like a hodge-podge of mostly questionable decisions based on a combination of trying to do what is expected of me and trying to forge my own destiny. But I'm finally starting to feel a little glimmer of that elusive balance: I'm spending time with my growing, dynamic, amazing family that includes three people I never planned to meet when I was younger and thinking about my future as a parent and who are such an important part of my present; I'm expanding into new and exciting territory as a foster/adoptive parent and as the client of a foster/adoption agency; I'm slowly working my way back into having a social life and hobbies that interest me; and I have a career (with a 403b and everything!) that is sustainable and fulfilling and stays mostly confined to work hours. I still don't actually believe that this is my final stopping point for my career - I have lots of plans for the future - but I can believe that this will be a nice fermata. And as far as feeling like I'm behind the curve for retirement planning?
Well, we're Millennials. It's not like any of us are ever retiring, anyway. X'-D
