I don't follow Instagram or Twitter. I'm fairly technologically inept and am also fairly proud of that. I'm a just-enough-and-then-no-more kind of user in this technological kegger of modern life. But I recently stumbled upon #Blogtober, which apparently has been around for a while. Look at me a'jumpin' on ye olde blog wagon, at least a little bit. Maybe I'm the blogging equivalent of a hobo who just barely manages to get a piece of the caboose at it chugs on by, gets dragged for a while, and then falls off by the wayside. That'll do.
I'm going to try to be somewhat more purposeful about blogging off of the suggest list. Truth be told, I'm jumping in this all willy-nilly a week into it, so I'm really just going to pick and choose what I want to write about. Maybe you all could help me decide the next topic. But we'll get to that at the end.
Ah, here's a beachball pitch for my first topic: What was your childhood dream job? What do you do now?
My job outlook as a child was divided into two distinct camps: be like my mom & be like my dad. That sounds about right for many kids, right?
In elementary school, I'm pretty sure "teacher" was the answer whenever I was asked "What do you want to be..." My mum is a retired elementary teacher, and frankly, I grew up with a firm understanding of what the job entails. I would hang out in my mom's room after school, grab a Pepsi from the machine in the teacher's lounge some days, play with the borders for the bulletin in her pull-out drawers, help her put papers in the graded trays. I can still tell you what was in which drawer and how she used to hang an extra sweater in the tall cabinet. The classroom has always been a comforting, knowing place for me. I helped occasionally with some basic A, B, C grading at our kitchen table on a Saturday night. From my perch, teachers were kind, amusing, and generally a smiley bunch of people. When you're 8 years-old, what's not to like about that? It was like I was accepted into the order before I earned my stripes.
Later on, when I figured out that Algebra makes sense to me because things line up neatly, and I liked writing out equations, I flirted briefly with the idea of going into business. I liked the idea of having a space of my own--a desk or cubicle, either works. I like the idea of having a title. I like the idea of moving around a building to go to a meeting. Heck...I have rarely participated in a meeting that I haven't been happy to be a part of. Meetings = a group of people who belong, who have something to contribute, who have been accepted, who belong. I want to belong. My dad worked the proverbial 9-5 office job for around 30 years, which again led to some understanding that this was a solid effort at earning a living. But that only lasted for a short span of time, maybe a year or so as a younger teenager when I realized that once you earned your way into the cubicle that you had to have some understanding of business practices. Next.
Now...where am I know? Ta daaaa: teacher. I've been employed with three high schools and two colleges and have been teaching all but 2 semesters of the past 9+ years in some capacity. I have yet to have the same semester schedule two times e-v-e-r, and rarely read a piece of student writing that I haven't read before.
And, interestingly, my career bent is taking me in the general direction of seeking out a hybrid situation of both teaching and business. Just let me have an office and a classroom both, and I'll be set. Plus (BONUS!), I won't complain about coming to meetings. In fact, I'll be there early with a pen and paper, maybe coffee, and an open seat beside me reserved for you.
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