Just sayin'.
For me, Teaching was my Dream Job. I always wanted to be a teacher since I was a little kid. I played school, even by myself, upstairs in my room with a big chalkboard, actually grading pages in old books as if they were student workbook papers. When my little sister Susan was old enough to finally be my student, I played school with her, creating a reading book and trying to teach her from it. When it was the peak of summer, I moved my classroom to the garage now and then because my room was too hot to play in.
I loved the idea of having my own classroom, a big desk, and writing on the huge chalkboard at the front of the room. Grading papers sounded like fun to me. I occasionally helped my teachers mark papers, even as early as second grade.
My commitment to Teaching wavered briefly in high school. After reading a series of books by James Herriot, a veterinarian in the English countryside, I changed course and decided to become a veterinarian myself. I informed my high school counselor, and we investigated my college choices and my remaining course selections for the rest of my high school years. I worked hard in chemistry just for a B, but it didn't deter me. Let's not talk about Algebra and Geometry except to say that I made it out of both of them.
I began Pre-Veterinary studies in college and ran up against a real jerk in Zoology I. Dr. H's first words to the class were, and I quote, "What are all you women doing in here?" It only got worse after that, but I didn't care and challenged him often. My dissection was impeccable; my interest in anatomy carried me through. It was only when we did blood typing that I found my weak point. I became nauseated and almost fainted. He was, in a word, gleeful.
To make an already long story short, upper level chemistry classes and more math spelled the end of my veterinary aspirations, hastened along by my odd reaction to blood. I've since overcome the latter, but my inability to deal with anything but straight arithmetic continues to this day. I'd probably have done okay with the chemistry, but it would have taken me forever and I'd have had to get good help.
I wasn't too sad to go back to Teaching. It felt like home.
Teaching would still be My Dream Job today if it weren't for the Not Teaching stuff. So much of the job is Not Teaching. If I could go to work and Just Teach, I'd still be doing it. I loved that. But I had so much other soul-sucking crap that was often more of a priority than the education of my kids that it stopped being Teaching and started being A Job. Just Work. And no matter how much I did, it wasn't enough and was never going to be. And no one--not one damn person in charge--ever said "Thank you" or "You do a great job."
And I'm sure, to some extent, it's because they were all under pressure, too.
Still, Teaching English was my Dream Job. I did it for a little over 30 years. And I was damn good at it, too.
What is your Dream Job?
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I don’t know that I have a dream job. I like the (mis)quote: “If work were so great, the rich people would take all of it and leave us with nothing.” HA! So yeah, being independently wealthy looks kind of good.
ReplyDeleteI love that you worked as hard as you did to try veterinary medicine. And I love that you were able to teach for 30 years, and that you loved the teaching aspects of it. Maya is unhappy at her office job and considering going to school for a teaching credential. I know the non-teaching part of it sucks hole, but then again, office work can as well, so that’s something. It has not been her dream job, she is like me and doesn't really have a dream job. But she is smart and kind and a hard worker, and I think would be an excellent teacher, so we shall see what happens next.
J--That quote is funny, but sadly true. It sounds very Swiftian, but a little Oscar Wilde as well.
DeleteEvery job, as we all know, has its lousy parts. No office, however, asks that you call parents or has parents constantly calling you. There is a lot of pressure there because someone's children and their eventual graduation and college are at stake. Of course, if it is elementary school, that is another whole set of issues, usually dealing with behavior and misperception of genius.
But anyone who feels the call should answer it. Our kids need good and dedicated teachers. It's the hardest job she'll ever love.
My dream job was actually several jobs - working in a library. I worked as a library aide in 2 elementary schools but left to work more hours as a secretary at a College. Then in order to afford my divorce, I worked a second job as a shelver, hold filler, and check-in person at the public library in my town. I just loved working in the library! I am retired now from all of my jobs but the library is still one of my favorite places (when it isn't closed for COVID!).
ReplyDeleteEllen D.--How wonderful to work in a library, surrounded by all those books and all that potential knowledge and information. It sounds terrific. And in an elementary school, with all those wee readers.
DeleteI can understand you loving your work at the library. I'd have loved your second job. It would have given me so many ideas of books to read.
I had my dream job for one semester in Harare, Zimbabwe. I was hired to fill in teaching English as a Second Language at an adult college. I had a beginners' class with diplomats' children and some others, a class of teachers from Botswana, a class of customs officers from Malawi and a class of refugees from various places in Africa who were planning on attending the University of Zimbabwe in the fall and needed to get their English to a level that would allow them to study.
ReplyDeleteAll of these classes were highly motivated, hard working and grateful to have the chance to learn something. So unlike most high school classes I had encountered. I was useful and anything I did was appreciated. It was a little taste of teaching at its very best.
Since then I have coached refugees here in Canada, and they have been rewarding, but that semester at Specis College was the highpoint of any teaching I have ever done.
There was very little money. The classes all had to work in their work books in pencil and erase at the end of the class so that the books could be used again. The Botswana teachers were all women. One of them early on in the class asked if I had a 'rubber' she could use to clean up her book. I was then faced with explaining that in American English the word was 'eraser' and that 'rubber' meant something else. When they asked what it did mean, I was reduced to mime to illustrate. I don't think I have ever had a class laugh harder in all my years of being an English teacher. Or have seen any class turn a better shade of red.
I was still coaching, up until Covid put us all into house arrest. Fun.
Mary--That does sound like Teaching at its purest and best form. What a fine experience. (There are no ordinary lives--great example.)
DeleteHow frustrating to have to reuse materials in that way. Not so different than having a 'class set' of workbooks as all of us did in our classrooms here in the US. Rather than fill in answers, however, I provided separate answer sheets. No money for education and its attendant supplies is a constant here. It's like we are a third world country in that respect.
Love the story of the rubber. Too funny! And you mimed it? Precious.
I had a very similar childhood with the dream of being a teacher. Math - just another four letter word that should never be spoken! I never had siblings, but I remember making neighborhood kids sit in class while I taught. My only real dream in life was being a mother. I was very lucky to be able to be a stay at home mom while my kids were all young. Once the youngest went to Kindergarten I went to work at their school in the office. I'll say it was my dream job because it allowed me to work the same days and hours that my children were in school, and that was the most important thing in the world to me!
ReplyDeleteMartha--I'm so glad your dream came true for you!
DeleteThat is a great benefit of working in education/school, having the same hours and schedule as our children. For me, it was a side benefit; I had always planned on being a teacher first and perhaps a mother.
Like you, my kids attended the same district in which I worked. Because of this, I was able to often pick their teachers, especially when they reached the high school where I taught. I saw them often during the day, and they worked in my class one period a day as an aide.
It's so comforting, isn't it, to have your children nearby if you can? That bond is strong.
Dee--Oh, how fun! The Orlando tourist district is really something. I was there quite some time ago with my late friend Ann, who was a big shot with one of the big resort companies there. Disney turned that city into a mecca, and it has a little of everything, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteI imagine you did meet a wide array of people while sitting in your bubble. Wow.
I like being retired, too. Best job ever.
My dream job was to be a lifestyle columnist in a newspaper. Like Erma Bombeck, or a local equivalent. In many ways I've achieved that dream in that I envision my blog as a lifestyle column that just happens to be online. No paycheck of course, but I feel like I've found my dream... while wearing jammies, even.
ReplyDeleteAlly Bean--Yes! You make such a great point here. I envision my blog the same way--as a column or op-ed. It just happens to be on a platform called "blog".
DeleteYou are living the dream, for sure, writing from home with a wide audience, and wearing your jammies if you like. :-)
I always wanted to be a librarian, until I took library science in high school and COULD NOT grasp the Dewey Decimal system. It doesn't make logical sense and that kept me from being able to memorize it. Also, the librarian was a terrible woman. Interesting that those two things completely derailed that dream. But it's probably for the best because even though that sounds like a nice bookish job, it actually involves some customer service & back in the day I was really bad at that.
ReplyDeleteThen I wanted to be an accountant because I liked my bookkeeping class & thought I could make enough money to support myself (I didn't date in high school & thought I would probably live out my days as a single lady). I did get the accounting degree, but never actually used it (except for being a bookkeeper in Zambia).
I like my current job quite a lot - I can see me working here until I retire (IF I'm ever able to retire). It would be nice to make a little more money, but local government doesn't really pay very well.
Bug--The Dewey Decimal System is a strange thing. I learned it's not absolute, either. A librarian friend of mine told me that there is actually a little bit of discretion in there when deciding to categorize books.
DeleteAnd yes, librarians do have to deal with The Public. I often thought I'd like to be a research librarian at a university. It sounds so interesting and varied.
How about cake taster or ice cream flavour developer? LOL. They'd be dream jobs but I wonder if you'd get sick of ice cream and cake.
An English flatmate loaned me some of James Herriot’s books many, many years ago and I loved them! Never thought I was cut out to be a vet, though, and I sure admire your determination in spite of the math and science challenges. When I was in the 6th grade, I had the most wonderful teacher who inspired me to follow that path. So I majored in English in college, but… never got my teaching certification because I worked 40-50 hours a week to pay for school and graduate debt free (actually a possibility back then at a state school) and could never do the student-teaching required.
ReplyDeleteTurns out it didn’t matter because within months of graduation I was off to the Arabian (Persian) Gulf to live with my English boyfriend (that’s a story for another day). My first post-college job was teaching EFL at Gulf Technical College in Bahrain. A year later, I went to Spain and continued teaching EFL for many years, most of them freelancing as a private teacher: in people’s homes, at companies, in the Spanish Air Force, and I even taught English to the blind for 3 years. During my freelance years, I ended up working simultaneously as an EFL editor for a textbook publishing company and did half-teaching and half-editing for most of the years I lived there. I loved the teaching, but I equally loved my work with textbooks and really enjoyed the design aspect of the textbooks as much as the content. I also did a stint for about 4 years writing movie reviews for an English language publication and sidelined with translation jobs when my Spanish was good enough.
All of those jobs convinced me that… there were certainly many paths I could have taken career-wise. I often think I would have really loved something in graphic design, although I doubt I would have excelled at it, lol. The only thing that has always been crystal clear to me in terms of a ‘dream job’ is that it has to be something creative. I could never have worked at a company where success was measured in terms of how far you could climb the corporate ladder. I hate all that bureaucracy with a passion, and I am so with you on the ‘Not Teaching’ aspects of teaching. I never really experienced that until I came back to the States and taught in a high school. I still have to deal with it to a degree, but thankfully, now that I am teaching at the uni, it’s not nearly as crushing as it was teaching in high school.
Ortizzle--"There are no ordinary lives." Yours is a terrific example of that quote. What a great string of jobs you've had! I'd have loved them all, no doubt. Yours has been a varied and exciting career life!
DeleteIt's so true that education has more strings attached here than anywhere else. And that teachers are more highly valued elsewhere, are viewed as more independent professionals, and are less the whipping boy for society's ills in other places of the world.
I think you've had your Dream Job a few times!
I dreamed of being a teacher through high school and was president of our future teacher’s club. My senior year I decided to explore a career in science though my school had ill-prepared me with their limited course offerings. In fact, in college I did find my passion but ended up engaging in a variety of professions under a broad term encompassing all — Communication. I did toy with teaching speech but decided to focus on broadcasting, radio, then TV was becoming prevalent. I wanted to work in public television but ended up in commercial TV. Ideally, my dream job would have been acting but the practicalities of life prevailed for me and I relegated that aspect of my life to the amateur level — but the ham lives on.
ReplyDeleteI should have added my goals were short-circuited by life circumstances but i stuck with communication becoming a second career as a Speech-Language Pathologist taking extra classwork to work with children who had severely disordered language. Again, life circumstances altered that plan and my SLP work ended up bring primarily with adults in health care settings, hospitals, rehabilitation settings in retirement communities including skilled nursing units.
DeleteOops — beginning a second career....
DeleteJoared--Working in television in its early years sounds like a pretty exciting job. I'm sure as a woman in a probably male-dominated field, it wasn't easy, though.
DeleteAnd then you took on a second career, a very service-oriented one. Good for you!