Your life on MTC

Exhausting awakening disheartening heartening heart-wrenching destructive productive intimidating infuriating enlightening disenchanting enchanting .............................................

It's difficult to describe how an experience has affected your life while you are still in the very thick of it...when in fact the experience has become one of the defining elements of the current period of your life. Still a worthwhile question. Here's what I've got so far....

Stating the Obvious

When you enter the program and complete the first summer, you become a teacher. Some time during the first year, you really become a teacher (forgive me, guys), unless of course you've taught before.

Escaping the Obvious

I left college interested in the subject I studied, but without the kind of passion for it that inspires productive and lifelong dedication to the furthering of that field. (I was also interested in philosophy, poetry, literature, sustainable agriculture, peace and conflict studies, human development, kites, kittens, tree houses, etc.) The passion I had was overwhelming and impractical, and I didn't want to give it up. The job that I do now is creative, dynamic, exciting, enveloping, productive, and lets me have summers free (or somewhat). My kids are every kind of inspiring. (Hopefully they learn something, too.)

I left college as a messy ball of non-specific passion. Or at least, un-directed passion. I did not want to destroy writing for myself by making it my job, and yet........
I didn’t want to sell out, give up on everything that put fire in my veins.

Teacher corps and teaching especially has been, I think, very, very good for me.

I didn’t sell out. I just found a little more direction. It is amazing. My kids are amazing.

Destruction and Development

The exhaustion of my mind and heart that happened after a couple of months in my own classroom was actually the foundation of my growth. It’s not easy to explain, actually, but the experience itself is worth something.

To keep it simple, I was missing some important perspective when I left college. My competence and confidence have both benefitted from my teaching experiences, as has my ability to identify with the grown-up world in a way that’s healthy and doesn’t offend my sense of childhood.

Relationships

With my heightened confidence has come, I think, heightened ability to make myself vulnerable to other people, in friendship and in love. That’s something.

Summary

Teaching and teacher corps together have given me something I really needed, something I don’t know think I could have found almost anywhere else, or at least not as quickly. Being torn down and then recovering is in and of itself a rather remarkable experience, and full of growth My students and their culture taught me something else all over again, especially when I let them sneak into my life as I did, letting myself slip a little into the community. Pouring yourself into something eventually causes others to open up, a little only, to you. Finally, from the people in teacher corps- a group of very good people who I have been able to trust and love- I have learned a bit about people and their hearts, about how we relate to each other, why everyone disappears, and why it’s so hard to really get close (questions I have had for a long time). Most of that learning, being able to learn from people, I think, comes down to trust, to being close with people, and I think that maybe for a lot of us it was easier to trust people in this particular group, based on commonality of experience. Anyway, I worry about losing this group, and value all of the time we spend together. June was gorgeous, especially since we’d already known each other for a year. At least one more year of this, all together, and may this next one be as meaningful and fulfilling as the last, with more success.