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I touch the future, I teach

Yesterday after a nice, long run for me (30 minutes, plus five minutes off and on of sprints), I was stretching near the upper gym entrance at Jordan's school. One of the teachers saw me and came out to talk about her daughter running a marathon and how her entire family went to PSU. Then another teacher commented on how she saw me last week doing the same thing. It was a nice few minutes, and then I went to my car to wait for my kid, thinking I should be teaching with them.

Even while volunteering for lunch duty yesterday, several kids ran up to me and asked me if I was substitute teaching. I am at the school so much anymore, between volunteering and subbing, that I really do feel as if I work there.

I said to my mom a few days ago that I just think I am going to get a job teaching at J's school. The chances are so small (though greater, I am sure, than winning the Powerball), considering the student body has been shrinking over the past few years thanks to charter schools. Yet for whatever reason, I believe teaching is my destiny, though maybe somewhere else, and perhaps just subbing for awhile (financially that won't work out for us in the long run).

As I mentioned in a comment to my last post, last week I had a phone interview for a substitute special ed teacher/teacher's assistant at a behavioral school. The interviewer said she would be setting up in-person interviews this week, but since she did not call me back, I am pessimistically thinking I did not get the nod. Considering I have had only a handful of interviews in my lifetime (my first interview, for a teaching position right out of college, was the only job I did not get), I think I did well. But I know I don't have the education or the experience to work at this school. I am not sure it is enough that I truly want to make a difference. I even told this woman that I am not jaded like so many teachers who have been teaching for years and that what I lack in experience I make up for in passion and wanting to positively influence kids' lives. Even on lunch duty, I try to get the kids to be kind to one another. Yesterday, however, I did use the old "You were just at church this morning. Do you think God really wants to hear you say that?" guilt trip on a few of them.

Maybe I need to work a little harder on that.
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