New Project on the Writing Table!

I’ve started my next writing project. Woo! My mom has been telling me about a book of essays she’s been reading and it got me thinking that it could be fun to write a series of essays based on my teaching experience–the good, the bad, the ugly and the hilarious. It’s a new type of writing style for me…I’ve never written a non academic essay, but I had fun creating the first draft. I’ve copied an excerpt from it below. That’s not quite the first half of it, and it’s still in need of some refinement, but it’s a start!

An Essay in Education: The Genesis of Teaching

My parents were always really good about reading to me almost every night while growing up.  My mom used to change words in the stories; it made me crazy.  There was a book that had the word ewe which she would read as you-EEEE and I would yell no!  It’s pronounced YOU.  My dad read me stories until I was old enough to read them to him, and then he would have me read instead.  This was still just as fun for me because it was the same down time at the end of the day, and I was still getting stories.  

So, when I graduated high school and began college, being an English major made perfect sense. I could read stories.  I could write stories.  It would be nice.  Until I realized I had no idea what exactly to do with an English degree—which it seemed often led to being a teacher.  A job I was certainly not interested in.

In 2000 there was much hubbub of the nursing shortage.  I like science and the career was in demand so I decided nursing would be nice and practical.  Only I really was not aware of how rather squeamish I am.  My cousin was an ER Registration manager and, sensing my weakness, said he would hire me because they needed someone to pick up spare shifts. 

I do not know if it were the girl who told me about eating her scabs or the woman who held out her sliced finger for me to smell, but it did not take long before I went running back to English, tail between my legs, and promising to never leave it again.  

Back to the career drawing board.

I used to work weekends, but when the alarm went off for work one Saturday morning—at nine, so it was not even early—I thought, I need to be a teacher so I can have summers off and not have to wake up early all 52 weeks of the year.  It is a very lazy thing to admit, but it is true.  In fact recently, at least as of this writing, a student asked me why I started teaching and I told her exactly that:  summers off.  She looked at me with some incredulity and said really?  Indeed, really.  I have no grand genesis story of wanting to change the world.  I wanted time off, and I think it is good to be honest with students about that.  Because though that was the catalyst, it was certainly not the reason I have stayed in the field for so long.