i am learning more about the other side of education than the one i knew at Banana Kelly. i often say that education does not only happen in classrooms, it happens on softball fields, and hockey rinks and soccer pitches and front stoops, and kitchen tables. though i was a coach and after-school educator in my past, i have mostly worked in classrooms or computer labs, and have access to lots of materials that can help me help kids. so while my job as a teacher is challenging, i do have resources at my fingertips.
i am learning about home - and educating at home, as well as at work. because it is easy to come home from teaching and vegetate. i will often lay like broccoli on my couch and imbibe the d-i-y attitudes of folks on HGTV. but my son raises his hands, asking to be held, and wants to continue learning when i get home. i need to find the patience and energy to begin a new lesson, the most important one of the day, after my energy is completely spent. we are writing, drawing, dancing, moving, listening to music... i am starting off slow. but i want to be organized enough to come home with a daily lesson, something to share with my favorite student (who is already schooling me on life and what's important).
i plan to send m.j. to public schools, because i am a public school educator and i believe in it. this will be a struggle within my family, but i'm confident in my ability to supplement and enrich what he's doing in school and provide growth opportunities at home. recently i've started to toy with the idea of teaching him at home, though it's not a foreseeable financial reality, i know that i could teach him well and raise a conscious, aware and critically thinking child. but he also needs socialization, and i am an interloper at heart, i love to be within institutions so that i can examine and deconstruct them.
i've also been interrogating what my next steps are, and i miss the classroom endlessly - but i want to change the shape and nature of where i work and who i serve, as i'm not where i want to be right now. i want to work with incarcerated youth next, as there is a location where unconditional love is needed. i want to travel, often. i want to see the world and continue learning how to become a better teacher. i don't want to be an administrator. i always want to work directly with students. and i want to retire from teaching and become a DJ, spinning in the barn on our farm. but i hope that the farm too can become a place for teaching, because i will never retire from my desire to grow.
