WhenI Decided to Become a Teacher

  Knowing what it felt like to wake up and go to a place where I could be happy every day…losing that…that was what it took for me to know that I had to become a teacher.  For years, I had wanted to.  But, I was pushing 40. Maybe substitute teaching was good enough.  I thought that maybe the teachers in the teacher’s lounge were right when they said that it is different when you have your own class because you have to deal with the parents.  I thought that maybe they were right when they said I was lucky I didn’t have lesson plans to write and papers to grade.  But now, I knew better.  I had a taste of what being a teacher was like when I substitute taught a kindergarten class from the start of the school year through the end of January.  The regular teacher had taken off to battle cancer and I was asked to fill in at the last minute.
      I actually worked two jobs during this time--my regular job at the Veteran’s hospital where I had worked for 16 years and this ½ day kindergarten teaching job.  The days at the VA were dull, unfulfilling, and meaningless and lacked any pleasure.  For 16 years, I served at the VA and had never been made a permanent employee.  The lack of benefits was taking a toll on my family financially and the lack of respect was taking a toll on me emotionally.
     When I was teaching every day, I knew what it felt like to get up and be happy every day.  I would wake up before the alarm went off.  I wanted to go to work.  None of the things the teacher’s said in the teacher’s lounge before made teaching full time less appealing to me.  I collaborated well with parents.  I developed a family atmosphere within my classroom…we were a community of learners…they learned from me and I learned from them.
     But at the end of January, I lost that happy place and those happy days.  The regular classroom teacher came back.  I am glad her battle with cancer was successful.  But for six months, those children were mine.  For six months I got paid in smiles and hugs every day.  For six months I got pictures and notes to hang up on my refrigerator at home.  For six months I got told I was the best teacher in the world.  For six months I got to watch my efforts help my students become readers and writers.  For six months I got to know what it felt like to get up to be happy.  And now, I was going to have to go back to forcing myself to get up and go back to the VA hospital every day where I knew no matter what, nothing I did was going to ever matter to anyone because for 16 years it hadn’t.
     On my last day of teaching that January, I did not get the opportunity to say good-bye to my kindergarten angels.  We had a snow day.  I went to the school and cleaned out my desk as tears streamed down my face.  My throat closed off as I tried to hold back the sobs while I put the book that I had written for the children in their cubbies.  I had wanted to read it to them...it had a picture of each student and a few sentences about how uniquely special each one of them was to me.
     I felt such tremendous loss of losing my students before the year was out... wanting to see the year through with them was my dream.  I felt such overwhelming despair at having known what it felt like to get up and be happy that returning to the emptiness I had before forced me to realize that decision regarding whether or not to become a teacher was not something I had to think about anymore.  It had been made.  When I came home from cleaning out my classroom that January day, I applied to graduate school at the University of Dayton.  Being a teacher was not a decision I think I made.  I think I was a decision that was made for me by God and I just had to find the path to it.