In the fall of 1989, I think it was, I was a college Sophomore. I had just transferred to Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga and after completing some core requirement courses at another school, I was finally ready to pursue my chosen major, English Education. One of the classes I was required to take with all the education majors was "Orientation to Teaching." Surprisingly, I scored pretty well on the pretend lessons I had to give, I really enjoyed our instructor, and I wrote some pretty decent research papers - but one day we were required to visit the local Christian elementary school. Upon "observing" in a classroom for a while and talking with the teacher, I pretty much decided then and there that teaching was NOT for me. And later, as I had an Elementary Ed. major room mate, I realized I had made the RIGHT CHOICE for me. I was just not "teacher material:" no burning desire to teach, no interest in creative lesson plans, no feeling of a "call" to instruct young minds, no passion for passing on knowledge.
I changed my major to plain ol' English, my one and only interest from the whole of the college catalogue; and by the end of 4 years, I just wanted to GRADUATE already. I didn't go to college because I wanted some big career, I went there - quite honestly - in hopes of finding a husband, in hopes of getting married and some day having a family. I guess God knew I'd need a 4-year degree for some reason, if for nothing else but allowing me time to mature, and so I graduated with a BA degree in "Interdisciplinary Studies with a proficiency in English" (a fancy way of saying a general liberal arts degree with not enough course requirements to merit a full English degree). It didn't matter; I had met Dan my Senior year - and at graduation, we decided we didn't want to go our separate ways. By that September we were engaged - and by that December, we were married. I was a wife - and while our journey to having children was way longer than I ever expected it to be, I never ever regretted my decision to NOT become a teacher.
I have held some jobs I liked, such as being a Library Technician in Germany at the Army Community Library. I have also been a temp agency worker, a receptionist/dispatcher at a photocopy company, and in pre-married life I was sales clerk. I even like my job as a church/school secretary well enough. I have held my ultimate dream job, what I hoped for all those years in college; I was a stay-at-home mom for 6 short, fleeting years.
Today I had to substitute teach. It's a job I stumble upon every so often because I am now a part-time employee - and logically, I'm the most available of the staff to sub. Today as I was faced with a COMPLETELY BLANK lesson plan book (the teacher I was sub'bing for has been dealing with a medical emergency in her family - and the last thing on her mind was making lesson plans), I was again reminded that this is so not my thing. It's not that I can't do it; I can teach, I can maintain discipline; I just have about zero interest in teaching. Looking through teacher planner books and teacher keys, I may as well have been studying Chinese. Thankfully, the teacher actually came in and offered me a little guidance to what in the world I was supposed to be doing (like showing me there actually IS a step-by-step teacher guide that shows you EXACTLY how to teach a particular lesson!! who knew?! obviously, NOT ME!). I was glad to know about the teacher guide thing because I had completely forgotten how to divide fractions and I don't think I ever knew the formula for finding the circumference of a circle. I fear I am not much, if at all, smarter than the 5th graders I taught today.
I don't HAVE TO do this; Dan knows I don't like to substitute teach. We can obligate other people, who might actually enjoy teaching, to change their schedules to come in and substitute; Dan would turn his own schedule upside down to accommodate me; but I feel like I need to do this as much as possible. It is one of the "hard things" in my life that I am trying to overcome. Little do these kids know they are probably part of God's big plan to get me out of my comfort zone, to force me to do what I need to do and not what I want to do, to remind me that PEOPLE are more important than my own priorities. Today the teacher learned more than the students.
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