A New Challenge

I realized last night when I was lamenting the work involved in an online class I'm taking that I hadn't talked about my new endeavor on my blog. As you may or may not know, I used to be a teacher. My first teaching job out of college was in middle school and was a harrowing experience. (I'm exaggerating only slightly.) I came in a few weeks into the school year and taught classes that were formed from pulling students from other classes. Thus, I ended up teaching five different classes on all three grade levels in four different subject areas. I didn't have my own classroom and had to "float" all day. And I shared a hole-in-the-wall office with two other teachers. Needless to say, it wasn't a very positive experience for a first-year teacher, age 22, who looked more like one of the students than like any of the teachers.

To make matters worse, because the school allowed the students to choose to pull out of their other classes to be in mine, I ended up with quite a few who were only in there because they got in trouble with their other teachers. Consequently, I had severe behavior problems, which included my being threatened bodily harm and confiscating an illegal substance in the classroom - you can guess what it was. And that was just in sixth grade.

After all that, I decided to go back to school to obtain my communications degree and go into journalism. I took a part-time job in an alternative school, which oddly enough was easier than the middle school (in spite of the fact that I had to break up a couple of fights), and went back to school full-time for a year to get my second degree.

After jumping around to a few different jobs, I ended up working in television a little over six years ago. It's been a good, steady job with growth potential, but as with a lot of industries these days, there have been layoffs and budget cuts and I've been thinking about how I could protect myself against unemployment. I've thought about getting a real estate license or a paralegal certificate, or trying to start a part-time home-based business. Then my Sunday School class, for the second year in a row, did a school project at Arcadia Elementary School. I listened as the principal told about all the outreach projects the school is involved in to help students and their families. I thought to myself how great it would be to be a part of something like that.

Then the light bulb went off...

The answer to my dilemma was right there in front of me. Now, I will admit that at one time, I said I would work at McDonald's before I would go back to teaching. (Not that there's anything wrong with working at McDonald's, mind you.) But the experience wakened something inside me and made me realize that if I was looking for something rewarding - and to fortify myself vocationally at the same time - the answer was staring me in the face. I know that I've matured enough to appreciate the opportunity to impact children's lives and had enough life experience to deal better with the adversity that sometimes comes with such a great responsibility.

So now I'm taking classes to renew my teaching certificate, which has been expired for more than six years. It's a challenge because I haven't taken a class in a very long time (unless you count the cake decorating class at Michael's...which I don't), I've never taken an online class, and it's been a very long time since I put together a lesson plan. I'm not sure where this will take me, but it's what I believe is in God's will for me to do and we'll just see what He does with it. By the way, any advice from current or former teachers is welcome. And prayers are definitely appreciated. It's going to be an adventure. But adventures are fun, right?