What follows is a selfish evaluation of teaching from an overall perspective on life and happiness. I have been starting to think of teaching as it might fit into my life, and so the thoughts here are about happiness and lifestyle choice and how teaching fits, and not just on teaching, as it is.
(Ben, you do not have to read all this. Seriously.)


Usually my weekends are packed. For a while, we had tutoring for state tests on Saturday mornings. Sometimes we have class for teacher corps, sometimes I visit friends, and there's always lots of work, and I need some time, too, to be still. I don't usually have time to be bored, though, or lonely. It's funny, to escape the isolation and when I really want a break from work, I fill the time with sensory input, I fill my space with other people, and I leave little time to be what I am when nothing and no one else is around. What are we when we stop being distracted by everything else?

Anyway, this weekend I don't have plans except to stay here and get some work done. Last night was a little heavy, in a sense, with nothing very immediate to look forward to, but it created the space for me to stop looking around for happy distractions and find my own groundings again.

This morning my roommate let me give him a half-hug without looking at me funny (we have really different personalities. I like touching people as part of communication, especially when I am comfortable- though I am pretty careful about it- and he usually likes to have some space), and we had a conversation that got me thinking.

I was thinking, and have been for a few weeks, I think, that I might stay in teaching, or at least in education, and use it as a spring board, as a starting point for other projects and ideas that I have occasionally thought of trying, just to see how much I could do, how much of an impact I could have, to see if any of my crazy ideas would actually be useful for anything.

That's really only a small part of it. Part of it is that I can't see myself doing anything else. The thought of working for institutions for any large portion of my life makes me cringe, and there's something in my mind that always wants to bail out, to get away, to not allow anything to gets its chains on me. I don't like being confined, stuck, restricted. I have an overpowering distaste- to the point of shudders and violent mental protest- for rules, for strict straight lines, for following guidelines and requirements, for boundaries, conventions...etc. I think that a lot of us do.

And it feels like settling, like caving in, like compromising- just a little- to say that I will stay in education. Besides, I hate the idea of education. I don't like it in concept. I don't believe that everyone should have to know the same material for any reason whatsoever. I do love language, and I think that people deserve- if they want it- the opportunity to learn to read, write, find information, do mathematics. I think people should have the resources to pursue whatever they want to, including learning, and that means that teaching and education still have some role, somehow, in society as I believe in it as a concept.

The world is not perfect. Education is not set up in a way that I believe in, and it is certainly not fair. Often people do not grow up with the resources- emotional, physical, etc.- to really think about themselves, I think, and what they want for themselves. Or maybe I'm way off base here.

Still, I cannot "fix" (according to my ideas, I mean) the way everything is, the way the world runs, the way society is currently set up. Part of my brain says that nothing else would be OK, and that is the part of me that refuses to accept anything as the right job for me.

There's got to be a place to start. I still believe in lot of principles, ideas, concepts that are not expressed accurately or clearly through what I am doing right now. But there's got to be a starting point somewhere, right? There are many aspects of teaching that I think might make it, if not the right thing, at least a good thing, for me and the way I would ideally like to live.

1) Affecting people in an important, positive way. Something finally dawned on me this morning- probably as an outcome of many conversations with that same roommate, who has both confidence in himself and also real faith that we are useful, that we are doing something good, that we matter to these kids (it doesn't seem like that sometimes to listen to him, but he really, really does, and it comes out when we talk about future plans, ideas, about life). As part of his confidence, maybe, he really believes that the role of one person is important, that by our actions we influence the world, that we can influence the world positively, and that this is one of the most important things in life, and the thing you should do that will leave you with no regrets.
I guess it just became clear to me that our actions really do matter. (I mean, I thought so before, but I don't think I fully believed that we could change anything. For so many years, everyone kept telling me that I was foolish and idealistic and young and that I needed to grow up and stop thinking that I could change the world. They really got to me for a long time.) It became clear that we can have an impact, and that there are millions of options for how to do that. And teaching is one of them. It might not be absolutely the most powerful (I mean, compared to being a legislator or lobbyist or taking some other powerful role), but it is a starting point.

To summarize all that: I have often been turned off to service because of this feeling that there is so much wrong, and there is so much hurt, and there is no way that I could actually fix any of it. I think I realized that we actually can make a difference. We can choose to be a part of something we believe in, to contribute in a way that we believe will matter. And we can make a difference, and that confidence can lead to ideas and projects and eventually we realize that we can do anything. People do amazing things. Why not us?

2) I like the freedom for thought that teaching gives you, the openness. We are definitely very busy, but there are also a lot of stimuli, emotion, personal and professional growth. From the chaos, a certain freedom is born. Teaching is an experience the tangles you up, that makes you question, that offers perspective. Even if I am stressed out a lot of the time- and hopefully the stress will go down a bit with experience- I am awake, I am alive, I am thinking. I am coming up with new projects and thinking of possible ways to make things better. When you see something wrong, and it is something important and something you care about, it is certainly stressful, but it also creates unlimited possibility.

3) And then there are the summers for breathing. Honestly, I am not OK right now. I need a break. I don't feel like myself and I don't feel human anymore. But I can have it. I can get into my car and disappear from the face of the earth for a month and not tell anyone where I'm going if I don't want to and turn off my cell phone and go the woods or the mountains and the ocean and sit there and look around and not speak or listen to anyone speaking. I wonder if I could function in another kind of job where I would not have that. I know that this is selfish, and a selfish reason to like teaching, but wrong or not, it is self-preservation, and I am not going to sacrifice certain parts of myself if I don't have to. I am not going to sacrifice childhood if I can avoid a situation where I will not have the space to exist.

Also, summers can be used for a project or two, or to read, or keep learning, or pick up an instrument or a language or four.

4) Financially, I feel like I can live with the kind of lifestyle I want on pretty much what I make now. I don't want to have kids- I don't know why, and I can't explain, because I really love children and they are made of happiness and light- and I don't want to settle anywhere long enough to buy a house. I don't ever want to be still. I would rather continue seeing new cultures, seeing different lifestyles, how people in different places live and the choice they make or do not make. I don't have any desire for anything big and expensive. The only thing that I really want for myself is my freedom- really that is the most important thing that makes money necessary at all, and that is even questionable as some extremes. I want to travel, which is part of freedom. I am so, so tired of missing people. And I realize that there is no way to be everywhere. You will always miss someone someplace, and people will never stay where you leave them, and there is no one and nothing you can keep, and moments that were everything exist still only in your precious memory. People move on and have new lives and our childish hearts still cling. And that pain, the empty space that love creates, that magic leaves when it flies away, the beauty would be incomplete without that. Still, I want to travel. I don’t want to be stuck here. If nothing changes, it seems that I have enough financial freedom right now to save for a plane ticket to just about anywhere, if I wanted to. That’s actually a rather important freedom, for me.

5) Nothing I can imagine will keep you as caught up in your job, as concerned and as obviously doing something important as teaching can. You work for the kids. Your obligation is the kids. Of course what you do is important. Of course you are affecting someone, even if it doesn’t feel that way. I can think of few other jobs that are like that. Most jobs, I think, have you in some way or another contributing to the making of money for someone already rich and maybe providing some small service or product that does not require your special touch.

I don’t want anything to be wasted. Especially passion. It would be like dying.

Anyway, again, the biggest issue is being free and feeling free to come up with ideas, travel, try projects, see where your ideas and aspirations can lead. Maybe this will be OK. (If you have actually read all this- thoughts?)