taking the leap

And now a drum roll please. Yes, you are witnessing this blogger about to take a big leap into the unknown. Ready or not...

A bit of background first. Bear with me. Fifteen years ago I embarked on a teaching career. My trajectory has been varied and far from linear. I have taught in so many capacities: from volunteer facilitator to program coordinator, and in settings ranging from preschool to adult education, from non-profits and alternative schools to the private sector. I've taught English (business writing, workplace conversation, literature, and more), Speech and Rhetoric, Cross-Cultural Communication, Czech, Drama, Journalism, Creative Writing, Pre-Employment Skills for adults transitioning into clerical, customer service and health care careers, and more. The bulk—though not all—of my work has been with teen and adult newcomers. You know, my people in the broad sense of the word: African, Central American, Middle Eastern, Asian, European—all first- or second-generation immigrants like I am in this country.

After all these years I still feel the passion. I was born for this profession. The electricity in the classroom as ideas are pondered, discussed, as new ones emerge, as discoveries and connections happen still excites me. When the moment is right in the classroom, I feel that creative flow artists talk about—the thrill of listening, enlisting thoughts and comments, responding, directing, dialoguing...

My favorite parts of teaching are the interactions with large groups of students and the planning phase that's all about brainstorming and coming up with the big ideas, preferably in partnership with other colleagues, as opposed to in isolation. Ask me to list essential questions--the deep, overarching questions tackled when studying a particular topic--and I'll give you a thousand. Ask me to help you brainstorm for an event or workshop, and I'll be there, on fire. Ask me to research an issue that I feel strongly about in depth, and I'm all over it. Ask me to spearhead a new project I can get behind, and I'll do it in a heartbeat.

On the flip side, don't ask me to sustain or maintain projects long-term unless new ideas and reinventions are integral to the process. I get bored and drained with the same old. I'm all about the enthusiasm and energy for the new. Don't ask me to do repetitive tasks, especially office work or anything related to tracking the budget! You get the drift. The parts of teaching that I dread are basically all the paperwork: grading, writing up lesson plans, making handouts, seeking out detailed examples and quotes for lessons, breaking down big projects into small, individual skills to be taught. I also dread returning to the same room every day, seeing the same walls, same desks, same garbage cans... That's why I'm all about teamwork. Collaboration not only keeps me inspired and energized; it allows each person the opportunity to excel at what she loves to do. Unfortunately, almost all the teaching jobs I've had have been very isolating for a team-oriented person like me.

Now you, if you are anything like my inner critic, may say: oh, you like the easy-peasy parts of teaching, the parts that are all about the initial boom and the big show, the components poised to collect the accolades if the show is good enough to be eye candy for the onlookers. The inner berating voice goes on: Don't be ridiculous. Every profession requires unpleasant, mundane tasks; one cannot always do just one's preferred things. But my question these days is: why not? Why not focus on designing my work life with an emphasis on my qualities and inclinations? I can handle some amount of "chores", of course--I'm an adult, but the amount of tasks I love to do needs to far outweigh the ones I consider mundane, so I can thrive. I've been steeped in education long enough to understand my strengths and for me to be able to let my talents shine fully, I need work that demands from me what I do best.

In a nutshell, I am an idea person, a global thinker, an initiator and brainstormer extraordinaire who likes variety and work encompassing a broad scope. I'm a person who loves to launch new projects, and who is most at home leading and interacting organically in a large group setting, and who likes to collaborate in the project planning phase. I think I'm good at listening to and inspiring people. I care deeply about social justice issues and I try to channel that into all my work. And again, I like to team up with others with varied strengths so that everyone has a chance to shine and feel fulfilled.

The main deal is that other than being a dedicated educator, I have also led other lives while allotting the biggest chunk of my energy for teaching. I am passionate about writing and about organizing events that help bring individuals together, revitalize communities, inspire people creatively, and have the potential to affect social change. I have a deep, buried love of the theater, and now a newly found passion for photography.

At this time, I am finding myself at a crossroads and I have decided to take the leap. I am moving away from my tendency to derive security from being someone's employee (though deliberately nearly always with plenty of freedom to teach how and what I want), to steering my own creative life. I have many creative projects in mind (a couple already in the works), one very large one in particular for which I am gearing up as I finish out the school year at the place where I teach. Once the year is done, I am committing to paving my own way as an artist, dedicating myself predominantly to the other passions I've been putting on the back burner for years: writing, directing, and working with visual images. Teaching--or rather facilitating workshops--will still be a part of my life, but in ways that excite instead of drain me. I'll keep you posted on the latest developments, but for now, I'm only sharing this much, because the projects I am initiating are still in-utero and need the sacred time of gestation first. Stay tuned.