Thank you to Guest Blogger, Jennifer Rios for sharing her own journey:
Teaching was, for me, an accidental profession. I was in my third year of college and on my third major - English - and was semi-committed to the vague notion of doing something “English-related” when I graduated. If all the ambiguity in that sentence didn’t clue you in to the lack of direction in my life, let me spell it out for you: I had very little.
Then, I volunteered to tutor high school athletes as part of an outreach program. I began with four high school football players, coaching them through the thorny topics of grammar and Shakespeare. It turned out that teaching wasn’t too different than coaching (perhaps, in hindsight, there is less profanity), and I was quickly and irrevocably hooked on the high of watching a student “get it.” Too late to switch my major a fourth time, I hastily added a minor in Education my senior year, moved back in with my parents and went back to school to get my secondary English license.
I never regretted that move and thirteen years later, working with students is still one of the greatest privileges in my life. I deeply believe that teaching is cyclical: I teach, and in doing so, I learn, and the more I dedicated myself to each, the better I got. It was like training for a race: with every run, my endurance improved and I got a little faster. I modestly but proudly thought I was training to become a pretty damn good teacher.
And then I hit “the wall”.
Any runner you ask will nod knowingly if you mention ‘the wall.’ It’s that moment in a long run when you are physiologically and psychologically depleted, and your legs turn to leaden rubber, your lungs painfully squeeze, and your brain screams at you to just. give. up.
On a random day in a random week, I thought long and hard about giving up. I even made a pro/con t-chart, getting down to the nitty-gritty details of a guaranteed supply of sticky notes versus not having to pick staples out of my wall. Part of me was appalled; an absurdly large chunk of my self-identity happily revolved around being a teacher. I was at a loss to explain my floundering to anyone: my colleagues, my husband, and least of all to myself.
When it comes right down to it - and if you are doing it right - teaching is hard. I had been running a half-marathon of teaching over the last thirteen years, and it was time to cross the finish line. I needed a change, but I didn't want to leave education.
The solution, my husband and I decided, was to move abroad. Teaching English in a foreign country is on my bucket list, so maybe it was time to cross that one off. Unfortunately, nothing international happens quickly, and in the interim, I applied for a different position with the district. To my surprise and pleasure, I was offered the job. I accepted and immediately panicked at the idea of leaving the classroom. What was I going to do without my kids? Who was going to make sure I knew all the hip slang and what the Kardashians were up to?
I spent the rest of the year alternating between excitement and guilt. Intellectually, I understand that a lot of teachers leave the classroom for other opportunities in education, but it also, on some level, feels like quitting. When my students found out and exclaimed “You’re leaving us?!”, I hunched my shoulders in shame. Alternatively, I felt a certain joy in cleaning out my room, gently packing good memories in boxes and gleefully tossing out years of accumulated and hoarded junk.
Regardless, in the fall I began a new job at the district office, and...I love it. It’s been like starting a new run, when you’re fresh and bouncy and the road stretches out in front of you. I’m still a teacher, but now I teach new teachers, helping to guide them along as they enter the delightful and challenging profession of educating our students.
Teachers are, I am beginning to see, only part of the system - an important part, to be sure, but one element in a complex and evolving organism. My journey as a teacher is now one of change, of newness, of leadership and mentorship. I think it’s going to be a pretty darn good run.
Jennifer Rios taught high school English at the Las Vegas Academy in Las Vegas, NV. Currently, she is a Project Facilitator at CCSD's Employee Onboarding and Development working primarily with new teachers. After 12 years in the classroom, Rios moved from teaching students to teaching teachers. #thisteachersjourney
