I came across this document that I wrote four years ago about my teaching experience and wanted to share it with you. It is probably more information about me than you might want to know, ha ha, but it was real, it was raw and it is over.
6/16/2013
In the beginning of the year 2000, I started feeling like I had just woken up out of a fog of a life that I had been drifting through. And, really, there was nothing wrong with that because I wasn’t unhappy or anything. I was just going through the motions of each day that we all do. It’s life. It’s what we do. But I suddenly yearned for something more. Something brand new and exciting. I was tired of being the me that I was. I wanted a new me. Life had become too predictable and too mundane. Each day seemed the same. The same getting up, going to work, coming home, going to bed, getting up, going to work and on and on. Every day was a repeat of the one before with the occasional social event or holiday thrown into the mix. I really needed a change and I needed something to get my brain excited about going through the hours and minutes that had suddenly seemed to be flying by now that I had just turned 50 years old in December of 1999.
My own personal theory is that the first 50 years of a person’s life is for exploring, experiencing, educating and enduring whatever life throws at you. The next 50 years, I believe, is to apply all that knowledge and experience you gained and put it to good use. To have learned from your mistakes but to have no regrets of anything you did in those first 50 years. It was all a learning experience and an apprenticeship for the last half of your life
So now I’ve made this decision to change. I was excited. I was on the quest of a new journey. But where to start and who exactly am I, anyway? I knew that I was an artist. I had been creating art since I was a kid and professionally as a Graphic Designer for over 30 years. Here I was 50 years old and feeling like a new life was trying to be born.
I wanted to try something brand new. So many people get locked into a job when they are young and it defines them. They think they can then never be anything else. Not true. You can do anything you put your mind to, no matter the age.
As I said, I had been graphic designing for over thirty years and with the advent of the Internet, print media was starting to dwindle. As a result, the graphic design business that had supported me all those years was beginning to change and I, quite frankly, didn’t know if I wanted to be part of that change. There were all these young technical geniuses graduating from college who were taking over the graphic design industry by storm. They were digital natives while I, although very knowledgeable and skilled at the graphics technology we were all using then and still do, I knew I was definitely a digital immigrant. So I began thinking, exploring, wondering, dreaming and researching what I could do next. It didn’t take long.
In 1968 when I first went to the University of Houston, I wanted nothing more than to be a graphic design artist. But I also fell in love with psychology and English Literature and took as many electives in those subjects as possible along with all the art classes required of the Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Graphic Design. I even continued to take psychology and English Literature courses after I finished all the art requirements for the degree plan.
So during that pondering and intense thought process of what to do next in my life, I decided I wanted to pursue my love of psychology and become a therapist. There was one slight problem. In and around 1974, I was almost complete with the BFA degree at University of Houston but suddenly just quit. I only had a few courses left to take but I was working full time at an advertising agency making big bucks for the year 1974 and saw no point in finishing the degree, as it would make absolutely no difference in my success and compensation as a designer. During those times it didn’t matter what credentials you had, it was what was in your portfolio. The portfolio was where you proved your worth and showed your skills. Silly, silly choice for me to drop out with only a handful of courses to take to graduate with that BFA degree as I quickly learned that you cannot get into Graduate School unless you first have a Bachelor’s Degree. I almost gave up. The thought of going back to school to complete an undergraduate degree was overwhelming.
Thank goodness for my daughter, Erin. She was working full time but also attending California State University for a BA and an MA in psychology. I was talking to her about going back to school and feeling disgruntled. I said, “Oh my goodness It’ll take me 7 or 8 years to complete the undergrad degree and get a Masters”! She said, “Well, Mom, look at it this way, the same amount of time is going to pass by whether you go to school or not. Wouldn’t you rather look back 7 or 8 years from now and say, “I did it”?
(UPDATE: It only took me 6 years)
She made her point and I began preparing for my big life change of phasing out graphic design and becoming a student. Erin suggested I apply to Los Angeles Valley College, a community college, to take some of the basics and then transfer to California State University. I was so nervous. She went with me to apply and register. I began taking courses the Spring Semester of 2001. I took History, Speech, Psychology, Statistics and a Philosophy and then was ready to transfer to CSUN (California State University Northridge) that fall. I fell in love with learning and couldn’t wait to get to class everyday. I even had a class at 6:30 am! But being the obsessive-compulsive person that I am, when I decide to do something I dive in headfirst. It was so invigorating and energizing to be learning again and to be around intelligent people.
While I was going to the University at night, I was still working in my design company as a graphic designer by day. I was one tired person but very happy. It took me two years to complete the BA in Psychology. I was so proud of myself and of Erin. She graduated with her BA the year before me in 2002.
Since the Graphic Design business was dwindling, my business partner and I decided to dissolve our business. We closed the doors in June of 2003. Now what? Yikes, it was scary. I needed to figure out my next step. I applied to Graduate Schools in Social Work in order to become a State Certified Licensed Social Work Counselor. My advisor at CSUN advised me that it would be a better route for me than Psychology because in that field you must attain a PhD in order to practice clinical psychology. The Social Work route was a more comprehensible way to go about being a therapist without having to get a doctorate degree.
I was accepted at both California State University Los Angeles and California State University Long Beach for their Masters in Social Work Program. Cal State LA was much closer to my home so I opted for that program. It would take me two years to complete the social work Master’s degree then another two years of a practicum to get licensed. It would be a long haul but I just kept telling myself “the time is going to pass anyway”.
The next hurdle was finding some sort of part time employment to bring in some funds since we had dissolved the Graphic Design Company. I was really willing to do anything to support my new direction. I was surfing on Monster.com one day and typed in, “entry level jobs”. The search produced many results but there was one that caught my eye. It was with Los Angeles Unified School District and was a special program called The LA Teaching Fellows. The Teaching Fellows Program was an experimental program that began in New York and Los Angeles and only lasted a couple of years. They were looking for people with Bachelor Degrees who had never taught before to teach in the lowest performing schools in the LA or NYC School District. They wanted teachers of Language Arts, Social Studies, Math and Science. So in order to be able to teach in this program, if chosen as a candidate, you would be required to take the State Test for your chosen subject matter. I could have chosen any of those fields but decided since I loved to read and write that I would choose English Language Arts. The advertisement said they would train us and place us in a job. That “lowest performing” thing should have been a red flag but silly, naïve me, I thought, Hey isn’t teaching school somewhat part time? I mean you get off at three everyday and have the summer off. Yeah, right.
I decided to read further about this Teaching Fellows Program. This was on a Friday and the deadline to apply was the following Monday. I had never, ever thought about teaching as a career. I really didn’t even like kids that much. Anyway, I thought what have I got to lose. So for the next two days I got everything together they needed — application, transcripts, letters of recommendation, etc, including having to write an essay on why I thought I would be right in this position. I sent it off (email was all that they would accept) and then sort of forgot about it. Two weeks later I got an email that I had been chosen to come in for an interview. I’m thinking to myself, hmmmm, maybe this might really happen but mostly I was sure that I would be one of the ones eliminated. I had made the first cut from 14,000 applicants down to 3,000 but I really never thought I would make the final cut down to only 500. I mean, think about it. They had over 14,000 applicants for 500 positions!
I went downtown to the big Los Angeles Unified School District building. There was a whole auditorium full of people just like myself from all walks of life. There were artists, actors, lawyers, architects, engineers, you name it, and there we were ready for our next adventure. Remember, the only stipulation was that you had a Bachelor’s degree and had never taught before. We were observed in small group settings where we were given a topic to debate, and then each of us had to teach a lesson to the rest of the group. I did a lesson on often confused words such as “there, they’re, their” and “to, too, two”. I was sooooo nervous but being the graphic designer that I was, I wowed them with my presentation flip chart using vivid colors and graphics.
After performing our lesson we were shuffled out to the waiting room to wait for our name to be called for a one-on-one interview. I still was not one hundred percent sure that I wanted to teach but I had kind of gotten caught up in the excitement and vibe that was in this room of people from all walks of life. Not to worry just yet. This was just the weeding out process and I really never thought that I would be chosen. After the interview, it was the usual, “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”. I just let it go. No real feeling about it either way.
Two weeks later I get a letter in the mail. It says,
March 24, 2003
Dear Jeanne Hunter,
Congratulations! On behalf of the Los Angeles Unified School District, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to the 2003 Los Angeles Teaching Fellow Program. You have been chosen from an outstanding pool of applicants and your acceptance to the Teaching Fellows recognizes your achievements to date and your commitment to the children of Los Angeles. You will be a member of a cohort of individuals committed to high expectations for student achievement.
Sincerely,
Los Angeles Unified School District
They picked me! They really, really picked me! Was I happy? No, I was literally freaked out. I never thought they would choose me and now I had to decide if I really wanted to be a teacher or not. What was I to do? I had already been accepted into Cal State LA’s MSW program that would be starting in the fall and now with the acceptance into the Teaching Fellows program I couldn’t do both. So, I consulted my wonderful and wise daughter again and she said, “Mom, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime. Take a leave of absence from your graduate program at Cal State LA and give it a try. If you don’t like it you can quit.” Great advice. So that’s what I did.
As an LAUSD Teaching Fellow, we were required to take a six-week boot camp course in teaching that the district set up for us AND they paid us for the training time as well. The training was informative, knowledgeable and fun. After the six weeks of intense teacher training, we were required to enroll into a University Intern Program for our probationary teaching credential. However before that was even possible you had to take the state test for your subject matter (thanks to No Child Left Behind). So I’m thinking okay how hard could it be? It’s just reading and writing, right? Wrong! It was a very difficult four-part 8-hour test. I really didn’t see how I could have possible passed it. I had no background in Language Arts. My grammar was very basic and I hadn’t read hardly any of the authors they referenced in the test. It also included an essay on a prompt they provided us. That was my one strong point. After just graduating with an undergrad in Psychology, I had written many papers and felt very confident with my writing ability.
A few weeks passed and I got my test results. I passed the first three parts with flying colors but the writing part that I was so confident about, I didn’t pass. I couldn’t believe it. I signed up for another test session and this time passed the writing section.
Since I had passed my state tests I could now sign up for the University Intern Program. I chose Cal State Northridge since I had just gotten my BA in Psychology there and loved the school. This was to be another two years of college courses at night while working during the day as a full time teacher. Now here was the ridiculous part. They wouldn’t accept you into a Teacher Credentialing program at the University unless you had secured a teaching job, yet the district wouldn’t hire you unless you were in a Credentialing program. Now how is that going to happen? It was like which came first, the chicken or the egg, but in this case it was which came first the teaching position or the acceptance into the Intern Program.
Frustration really set in for all of us who were supposedly the officially chosen “cohort of individuals committed to high expectations for student achievement” carefully selected for the LA Teaching Fellows Program. We soon found out that all they had promised when we signed up was nothing like what the reality was. They treated us like royalty during the selection process and throughout the teacher boot camp but suddenly we find out that not only do we have to go back to the University for two more years for a probationary teaching credential AND they not going to find us jobs (as indicated in the beginning). They held job fairs for us but they were a joke. There were only a handful of schools that took part in those fairs and they hired the first person that was breathing. They really didn’t care about credentials or experience.
I needed a job quick. Me, being the proactive person that I am, I downloaded a list of LAUSD middle and high schools within a twenty mile area of my house in Burbank and sent out over 25 letters to various schools looking for a teaching position. Then I just had to play the waiting game. I tried using my graphic design skills to make the letters and resume visually appealing and not the bland, boring usual types. Just use color, nice fonts and keep your fingers crossed.
In the meantime, since my graphic design company had been a corporation that was closed and dissolved, I was technically an employee and therefore eligible for unemployment. It wasn’t much, something like $473 a week. I guess at this time I was a little bit in a mild panic. I tried to keep a positive attitude. Nothing is ever gained from worry but try telling that to your brain. I had a letter from Cal State Northridge stating that if I got a teaching position I would be able to enter their credentialing program. All I needed was a teaching job. “Please, please somebody hire me”, was constantly running through my head.
On the Saturday following my mass mailing of resumes to various schools, my husband and I went for a drive. I had been home for a few weeks after the teacher boot camp and was just waiting for somebody, anybody to call and offer me a teaching job. We passed an Antique shop with beautiful antiques displayed out front on the sidewalk. I said to him, “You know, I’ve always wanted to go in there”. He says, “Let’s go”. I say okay, it will be fun. We can’t buy anything but it will be fun to look.
We step inside the shop. It is packed with all sorts of treasures and trinkets, from furniture and lamps to glassware and jewelry. As we walk up to the owner whose name was, Sally, I recognized her as someone who had owned a shop a few years back near my graphic design studio. In fact my partner and I had bought two antique chairs from her for the office and now that the business was closed, I had the two chairs in my home. She and my husband began to talk about music and found out they had some friends in common. While they were talking, my eyes roamed around the shop. Way off in the back corner was an emerald green Tiffany lampshade atop a gorgeous base. The lamp was on and it glowed like the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz.
After waiting for a pause in their conversation, I said to him, “You know how you always loved Tiffany Lamps but I didn’t?” He says, “Yeah, why?” I point to the emerald green lamp and say, “Well, I love that one”. I ask Sally for the price of the lamp and she says, “Oh, that one? Funny enough it just came back to the store yesterday as it had been rented by a movie company for a prop in Jack Nicholson’s New York apartment in the film “As Good As it Gets”. Then she told me it was $500 dollars. I had little money, no job and had just applied for unemployment. There was little chance I could buy the lamp and I let it go.
Later that night, I woke up about 3 am and couldn’t sleep. I flipped on the television the movie playing was As Good As It Gets. It was the scene in Nicholson’s apartment showing the lamp. To me it was a message. I had to have that lamp.
The next day was Sunday and the following day was Memorial Day so I could not contact the shop until Tuesday. All I could think about was that lamp. I talked it over with my husband and said I absolutely must have it but how can I buy it with no money. He reminded me that the shop owner, Sally, had mentioned she was looking for someone to help out in the store so I thought. That’s it! I’ll offer to work off the $500 while I’m looking for that elusive teaching job. Tuesday morning came around, I called the shop, and it didn’t open until noon. Around 11 am the mail was delivered. What was in it? My very first unemployment check in the amount of $473 dollars. Ah ha! Now I could get my lamp. I could hardly wait until the store opened.
At 11:50 I headed to the shop. I rushed to the front door and walked in. I looked in the direction of the lamp and it wasn’t there! I was in a panic. I asked Sally, the shop owner, about it and she said, “Oh, it’s over here. I moved it. I had a feeling you’d come back for it.” I told her all I had was $473 dollars and that it was my whole unemployment check and I had no business spending it on this lamp but because of seeing it on TV at 3 am, I felt like I absolutely had to buy it. I went on and on about how I shouldn’t spend the money when I had no job and no money coming in. She said, “Come over here and give me your hand”. I did so. She held my hand and said, “The lamp will bring you good luck. Tomorrow morning you will get a call at 8:00 to go for an interview for a teaching job.” I thought, “Yeah, sure, okay, that won’t happen but at least I’ll have my beautiful lamp.”
The next morning at 8:00 am my phone rang and it was a principal from a high school I had applied to in my mass distribution of my resume to over 25 schools. I didn’t really even remember the school. Fortunately, it was fairly close and I said I could be there in 20 minutes. I had this beautiful teaching portfolio all ready to show off but they didn’t even ask to see it! As is typical, it seems, with most public schools they just wanted a breathing body. I left feeling a little bit strange. They had called me, I had interviewed which lasted all of 15 minutes and they didn’t even want to see my portfolio. Oh well, I thought, we’ll see what happens. I got home around 9:30 and there was a message on my answering machine offering me the teaching position. I called them back immediately and accepted.
I couldn’t believe that what Sally had said came true. I went back to the shop that day and told her what happened. She said, “Well, I told you”.
So now that I had been offered a teaching job, I could join the Teacher Intern Credentialing program at Cal State University Northridge. I signed up for three classes at night. This was going to be a very busy time for me. Taking three college courses and teaching high school full time.
My first teaching job was at Benjamin Franklin High School in Highland Park. It was only about 12 miles from my house so the commute was not bad at all. Highland Park is an old area of Los Angeles that used to be very desirable because of it’s close proximity to the center of the city but over the years had become somewhat rundown. It was a little scary for me coming from squeaky-clean Burbank. I wasn’t used to seeing every object and/or building covered with graffiti or bars on windows and doors. Or a high school campus with chain link fence around it with razor wire on top. The school even had a full time paint crew that repainted the outside of the school everyday because of kids jumping the fence and tagging up the school with graffiti.
I arrived a couple of weeks later after being hired for the first teacher in-service days where we could prepare our classrooms for the first day of school. I went to the office, they gave me a key and the classroom number. No other information, advice, rules, instructions, and/or procedures.
My classroom was a totally, rundown, and beat up bungalow. The kind of building that was constructed to be used as temporary classrooms for a month or two in Los Angeles Unified School District when in actuality it had been there being used for over 30 years. It was pathetic. I spent days cleaning it and making it look inviting for my students and a place I felt I could live with. I am an obsessive compulsive everything must be nice and in order kind of person and I just had to make it work for me. It ended up looking quite nice but every single desk was either tagged or carved up with names, obscenities and crude drawings. Even the teacher desk was an ancient metal gray desk also covered in graffiti, carvings and basically just nasty looking.
I made the best of it. Covered the desk with contact paper but there wasn’t even a teacher chair so I brought one from home. I used colored rolls of paper to hang over the windows that had ugly, broken, falling down mildewy, thousand year old venetian blinds on them. I hung posters and artwork on the walls that had a ca-zillion nails and staples in them from all previous things that had been mounted on them. The mouse that every week ran through the classroom from one wall opening to the next was just a nice touch and always good for some comedy. Everyone would jump up, the girls screaming and the boys laughing at the girls for being scared. Just another day in the classroom.
The bungalow was the farthest one from the main campus. It was even across the street from the main campus. I felt so alone. No one checked up on me. No one knew what the heck I was doing. If I was being a good teacher or not. I could have been beating children senseless or been high on crack and no one would have even known. No administrators ever came to my classroom. Welcome to a large public high school in one of the largest school districts in the country. Franklin’s school population was over 3000. I had always attended private school and my high school had only 450 students for all four grades. It was overwhelming really to see this sea of brown faces and knowing that I had to teach them something.
I was really nervous and apprehensive about teaching. And I’m wondering, where is this coming from? I have stood in front of crowds in convention halls or presented at corporate meetings feeling full of confidence on selling a design or advertising. But here I was in front of a bunch of teenagers scared to death. I almost felt ill. I had only had 6 weeks of teacher boot camp. Could that really have prepared me for what was to come? Oh no. Not even by a long shot. But I was naïve and hoping for the best.
The first day came and students poured into my room. They were loud and boisterous and I couldn’t even hear myself speak over them. Some of them were even really scary and threatening looking and I was literally afraid to make eye contact with them. I later found out that the reason I was hired at this high school was because the English classes were overcrowded and they needed another English teacher to ease the load. Well, guess who my students were? They were the students that the other English Teachers didn’t want. I had a band of misfits. Oh great, just what a first time teacher needs.
One of the first mistakes or rather, I should say, an eye opening realization I experienced was that I had mistakenly thought that students wanted to learn. I thought, “Oh great, I can teach them to write about great literature”. I was absolutely shocked and amazed. Not only did they not want to read, many of them couldn’t. I had them tested and not one read on grade level. In fact one of my 12th graders read on a second grade level. So I couldn’t get them to read and then trying to get them to write was a whole other story. “But Miss, I don’t know how to write”, “How do I start?” “What do I write about?” and on and on. I said, “You know how to speak don’t you?” Well write it down just like you are speaking it. They just didn’t get it plus they had no motivation. And homework? Ha, what a joke. They laughed in your face if you even hinted at homework. They were all issued textbooks but at least 95 percent of them left them in the room and never cracked them open.
That first week nearly crushed me. I was so disillusioned. I remember walking back after a morning break between classes to my seemingly million miles away from the main campus bungalow that first week of school and practically bursting into tears. I really hadn’t made any teacher friends. Just acquaintances at staff meeting. I asked myself, “What am I doing here?” I’m not a teacher, I’m a designer.” This was going to be tough but I was determined to stick it out. Over the next 6 and a half years I would still be asking myself that question and It would become sort of a mantra, “What am I doing here?” I’m not a teacher, I’m a designer.” I honestly always felt like an imposter. I’m a designer, I’m a designer, I’m a designer. Not a teacher.
I was in a complete state of shock and felt utterly hopeless. In graphic design I had all the confidence in the world but I was insecure and full of self-doubt in this situation. What had I gotten myself into? It was sink or swim. I decided to swim. I began racking my brain for ways that I could make learning fun. Employing all my creative and artistic skills to present learning in a way that would engage students. Sometimes it worked but most of the time it didn’t.
I didn’t know the first thing about being a teacher and was really unprepared for this population of a low-income, poor performing public school populated by 99 percent Hispanic students who came from generational poverty and generational gang affiliation. Many were in gangs; many were in trouble with the law, on probation with some wearing tracking devices on their ankles. It was rare for them to have two parents. They were loud, rude, and with every other word of their conversations peppered with profanity. The F word was an all purpose word for everything. It could be used as an adjective, noun or verb depending on the sentence. I became immune to it.
And, oh my, the clothes they wore. The girls seemed to be in various stages of undress. They wore skintight, painted on clothes with flesh bulging out of every opening. The tiniest tank shirts, strapless tops and the shortest shorts possible were the norm. Whereas the boys who were stick thin wore the baggiest clothes I had ever seen. It was so ironic to me. The girls were chubby and wearing clothes that were skintight and could barely contain their flesh while the boys were skinny and wearing clothes several sizes too big and hanging on them like tents. Shouldn’t the boys be wearing the smaller clothes and the chubby girls wearing the big clothes?
I don’t know how the boys could concentrate with all those breasts and booties hanging out. Could be the reason there were so many pregnant students. This was another shocker to me. There were so many pregnant girls on campus. Not only were they pregnant they were proud that they were pregnant. They flaunted it. And the ones who weren’t pregnant couldn’t wait to be. This was another generational trait, I suppose, since most of the students’ parents were teens when they were born. I actually had a tenth grader once who already had three children. They were getting pregnant as early as 12 years old. I not only felt sorry for the teen mothers but for these children being born to children. I never met one pregnant student who was sad or sorry for being pregnant. It was some sort of right of passage to them, I guess. And the boys! Oh how they would strut around all proud that they had gotten their girlfriend pregnant.
There was lots of absenteeism that really made teaching difficult because then you had to try to catch up the students who had missed the previous days lessons. And to top it all off the students who had been absent, whether it was one day or many, never, EVER asked you what they missed. I once was so frustrated that I told my classroom in a very sarcastic tone, “You know when you are not here in class, we don’t do anything. We just sit here quietly not doing a thing because we didn’t want you to miss anything. Now that you’re back we can get back to learning.” I got blank stares. Many of them just came to school so as not to receive a citation for being on the streets. Very few of them actually wanted to be there. To be fair though, there were some wonderful students who really did care about school and wanted to learn and do well. Those were the ones who kept me coming in day after day.
In the meantime, at night, I was attending teacher certification classes at the University. I really enjoyed these classes and many of my fellow LA Teaching Fellow candidates were also there so we got to exchange war stories. Since we were all LA Teaching Fellows who had been placed in these low performing schools, our stories were virtually the same nightmares. But misery loves company and talking about it always made me feel better.
I taught at Ben Franklin High School for the two years while I was getting what I was later to find out was a “probationary” Teacher Credential only to learn that I then had to take a two year course from the District to get the permanent credential. I was in shock. I had already gone to the University for two years for the BA degree, then two years for the Teacher Intern Program and now I needed two more years of some required district program. Good grief, I could have been a lawyer or a doctor by now with all this schooling! I decided that if I was going to have to spend two years in some inane District required program with no college credit that I would also enroll in a Master’s in Educational Technology Program at the University. If two years were going to pass I wanted more than a silly piece of paper from Los Angeles Unified School District saying I could teach in their schools. I wanted a piece of paper worth something — a Master’s Diploma.
Oh but first I had to take the dreaded GRE test for graduate school. My daughter was also entering graduate school and needed to take the test too. We studied for three months for the test and then registered to take it on the same day. It was grueling. Absolutely without a doubt the most difficult exam I have ever taken. There was a section on vocabulary with words so foreign to me that I said to myself, “Is this English? Did I get the wrong test?” When it was over both of us were completely drained and brain dead. My daughter said she started crying in the middle of it because it was so difficult. After a few weeks we got our results and we both did really well making high enough scores to enter grad school. I feel for anyone out there who has to take the GRE. It really will make you cry.
I started my Grad Program and it was so fantastic. It was something new that the University was piloting. A Masters Degree of Educational Technology. There were only 18 slots to get into the cohort and I made it in. We would complete the degree in two years of classes but because they were experimenting with this degree plan as a cohort group, all 18 of us would take every class together and collaborate on projects. I don’t have to tell you what good friends I made and to this day love dearly. I loved going to the University and to the classes with my cohorts. I loved being in an intellectual learning environment. It was what made me able to get through the days of students in my classroom that tried my patience and made me want to quit teaching. I just kept thinking that it had to get better and easier.
I completed my Master’s Degree and wrote a thesis I was very proud of. I had done it. Yay! And since I completed the District’s two year program while I was getting my Masters, I was awarded my 5-year teaching credential. I had enjoyed going to the University for the last six years and actually cried when I drove away after graduation because I knew I would no longer be coming to my beloved campus anymore.
After teaching at Ben Franklin for 3 years, myself and some other teachers collaborated with the principal and got funding from the district so that the students could have sets of laptops in the classrooms. Schools and teachers in the United States were still teaching using a hundred year old factory model with books that were outdated as soon as they were published. With computers we felt we could engage our students. The students were the digital natives. They had all the toys — ipods, iphones, mp3 players, and computers at home. Why would they want to look at a book when all the knowledge in the world was at their fingertips via technology and the Internet? Technology was what they knew and wanted. I felt that it was the only way we were going to peak their interest.
On campus, students were forbidden to use mp3 players and cell phones and if they were caught using them, the devices were taken away for a month. This made no sense to me. Technology was what they were interested in. Instead of fighting students on the use of electronics why not embrace the technology. Why not use cell phones and ipods as teaching and learning devices?
I guess I was ahead of my time because the principal and teachers looked at me like I was nuts. The sad thing was, the majority of teachers were computer illiterate. Coming from the world of graphic design and the use of all the latest technology, I was ready to pull my hair out. I bought a laptop, projector, speakers and a document reader with my own money and used these in my teaching. You would have thought I was from outer space the way all the teachers had to come to my classroom to see what I was doing. I used visuals, I used sound, I showed students what learning looked like. It was working. I even wrote my thesis on the effects of using visuals to help students write more effectively. It was a concept called “Seeing and Writing”. I was having great success with this method. I am proud to say that 4 years later when I resigned from teaching, every classroom had a laptop, projector and document reader. As it should be.
After we were able to get carts of 36 Apple MacBooks carts in each of our classrooms, the students couldn’t wait to come to class. Of course, some of them wanted to play on them instead of what they were supposed to be doing. Enter teacher software on the teacher’s computer that showed every student’s desktop screen. If the student wasn’t on the correct screen the teacher could simply shut down their computer from her desk. This only had to happen a handful of times before they knew they had to be on the right page. I was finally really enjoying teaching because I am a gadget-geek girl at heart and now I had all the technology I wanted or needed. The students could do research, write their essays or reports on their laptops and then simply deposit them in the teacher’s drop box on her computer via the wireless network. Paper eliminated.
I was enjoying teaching and thinking that this is what I would do until retirement age. If I taught 12 more years (I had been teaching now for three years) I could retire with full health benefits and a hefty retirement income. To further enhance my credentials, I also at this time decided to pursue National Board Certification. By getting this certification I would receive a substantial increase in salary that would also boost my retirement income amount. I convinced one of my colleagues to go for it too. He was one of my best friends and I thought it would be fun to do it together and we could help each other. We both applied to the Program and got our Packet. It was overwhelming to me. I had tackled everything so far with confidence and gusto but this seemed over my head. It was so difficult. The instructions on what to produce were not clear and on top of that there was only a 30% pass rate and it took most people three tries to pass. My confidence was waning and I sort of entered a depressed period. I didn’t really feel that I was teaching anybody anything. I moved ahead anyway with the NBC Certification and sent off my completed packet as well as did my friend.
We waited anxiously for our results that would take four months. We got our results and neither of us passed. He was really upset about it and decided to keep trying but I just didn’t have it in me to do it again. I was really at a low point but still feeling encouraged that we had been successful in implementing technology into the classroom and that the students were more engaged due to their access to the internet and producing class projects digitally.
I continued along with my heart not quite into it. My friend asked me what was wrong and I said I honestly don’t know. I think I may be burned out from beating my head against this brick wall of trying to make a difference and yet seemingly having no effect at all. He said, “That’s not true, you are a great teacher and your students love you.” I guess maybe he was right but I just didn’t feel it. I felt like that imposter. I’m not a teacher, I’m an artist.
Then in the spring of 2009 my wonderful school, Benjamin Franklin High School that I dearly loved had to lay off some teachers due to the diminishing population of the school. The demographics of the neighborhood were changing. Because of its close proximity to the center of Los Angeles, Highland Park was becoming an affordable and desirable place for young families to live. Many of the Ethnic families who had inhabited Highland Park could no longer afford to live there. The new families moving in either had no children, fewer children or sent them to private school.
The sudden realization that I might be one of the teachers to get laid off made me so sad. My depression deepened. I had so many good teacher friends there and students who I dearly loved. I just couldn’t imagine leaving what felt like was home. I held out hope that I wouldn’t be one of the ones but there was that morning when I went to the office to sign in and there was a pink slip in my box asking me to stop in and see the principal. I already knew what it meant. I felt like I had a hole in my stomach. I had taught for four years yet my seniority was low compared to the rest of the teachers who worked there. I really felt lost. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I really needed this job. What was going to happen now?
Another teacher friend who had also lost their position at Franklin got a job at another nearby school and had recommended me for an open English Language Arts position. I made an appointment for an interview. On the day of the interview, it was cloudy, rainy and completely dismal. As I parked my car, I felt a feeling of doom. I asked myself if this was a sign. I found out later that it was. I interviewed and they hired me. Once again, I received a key and a classroom number.
I stayed there for one and a half years in complete misery. I hated the school, the students and most of the teachers. I had spent 5 and a half years trying to be a teacher but it just wasn’t me. What had started out a a few years ago as a bright new future career was slowly becoming a big drag and I became very depressed. I was getting up at 3 in the morning working for three hours before I left for school just trying to come up with something that these kids could grasp or become interested and engaged in as learning. It was such hard work.
I tried to like teaching. I really did. I constantly looked for ways to present information in a way that my students would “buy” it. All those years in graphic design was all about selling ideas so it made sense that it would work in the classroom? Sounds logical, right? Well, it didn’t really seem to work that way. I got their attention for a few minutes and that was about it.
And so it was on a Tuesday afternoon in January of 2011 that I came home from school and declared that I was done. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I called my principal and told her that Friday would be my last day. The school was very upset with me. I have never burned a bridge in my life but I surely burned that one. I couldn’t help it. I had to save myself. I was being beaten down to a puddle of mush trying so desperately every day to try to engage students in learning. It was beyond me. I gave it my best shot. I was good at it. I had some fun times and met some wonderful students and fellow teachers but the door was going to be closed on this career and the key thrown away.
After all, I am an artist, not an English teacher.
mindful things 