The long weekend is upon us and gratefully I attended my one Friday class and went to the nurse to complain about a sore throat, verbally crossing my fingers it wasn’t some sort of porcine avian somethin’… whatever it was, it isn’t affluenza. I’ve been so anxious about my authentic passionate “why I wanna be a teacher” reflection, I forgot about money for a while. So I hope I can channel my glee that my MidAm bill was only $88 into any statement I have to write about my impending teacherhood.
Tom Cruise is showing Oprah how to cook. Bacon? Oprah weighs more than me. She could hire people to lift her feet for her to exercise. And she’s cooking bacon. Oprah needs to pick tomatoes for a few weeks and walk to college from her house for a few weeks. She’d lose weight too.
My Great Aunt Jeanne told my momma, “that’s a big girl” the other day when I was walking down the hall. Great Aunt Jeanne loves me but she’s got Alzheimers now, so there’s no filter. Admittedly I’m bigger than her daughter, who is a teensy pip-squeak. Or, as my boys would say, she’s puny.
My boys are home this weekend, I have loads to study, and life seems pretty good in spite of my sore throat fatigue general malaise and ibuprofin popping habit.
I want to teach art. This requires huge leaps of faith daily. Daily I remind myself I can do this, and once I’ve done it, there will be a job for me. Because it’s the only thing that makes sense.
Once upon a time I was a student. I do not recall much in the way of art education in grades K-12.
I was born in Louisiana, which is a very interesting, historically creative and colorful state. I spent K-4 in Cameron, Louisiana, which for all practical purposes, is no longer there. I spent 4-12 in Springhill, Louisiana. I repeated 4th grade. I know why it happened. I failed math consistently for 8 years.
I spent time in both gifted and talented classes and special education classes. I was evaluated in 7th grade and diagnosed with a learning disability “in math” – or maybe just in memorization. I don’t know my multiplication tables and I don’t think I could tell you what an adverb is either. Or other grammar things. Can’t define them but obviously I can use them well.
I went to college at NLU which is now ULM and used to be other names, like when my dad went there. I felt I was well educated, challenged, I think they did a good job of teaching me, and at the end I had a bachelors of fine art degree.
But what do you do with that? I asked myself that continuously. After I got it.
I got an interesting education just living my life. In spite of the fact that I have a huge hugewonderful family in Louisiana, I was dragged somewhat reluctantly to Iowa, to live among my then-husband’s few relatives. In need of family I learned to tolerate his local relatives well. I gave birth to three children, and an ex-husband (insert strange social/emotional/statistical assumptions here).
I have three kids!
In the course of divorce, I lost my home of 9 years but gained my independence and my very first apartment. I lost all faith in the local “ex-family” and found my first true love best friend.
Here in Iowa, I had a few jobs with varying success. Well. Two. Church Secretary being the unsuccessful first. The second was what I thought was great at the time. Having failed dismally to keep a job as a church secretary (I was there about seven years, so how hard could it be? Well it’s not hard if your thyroid gland cooperates!) I admit it. They didn’t want me anymore.
I got a part time temporary job at the grand new Sioux City Linens N Things and worked my way up, in only three years, to Assistant Manager. Goal accomplished. Kids had health insurance, & I could afford food without food stamps. According to me, I could do anything. Well there was a small hitch, right there at the end. Linens N Things filed for reorganization. Oh that means bankruptcy. The very day we figured out exactly how much money I’d be making as the assistant manager, that was the day LNT began a long slow painful decline.
Then I closed it down. I watched the liquidation of our merchandise. I watched the sale of all our fixtures. The shelves I’d worked so hard to fill the beginning, gone. The ladders I’d built strong muscles climbing daily up to the tippy top shelves in the ceiling of the building, gone. I locked the door the final day myself. No more successful job. No more staff. No more insurance for my kids. No more real world. No more store.
So what now?
I took a class at the AEA required to obtain substitute authorization. Because I have a degree, and several years work experience, Iowa will allow me to substitute in grades 5-12. The class was incredible and I was so inspired by the opportunity I saw there. But.
The more I thought about it, it seemed like teaching would just be the coolest thing I could do. I’m an artist. But there really aren’t any companies out there hiring people like me. (Well, I hope to teach at the art center next year.) I’m a mom, I have great kids, obviously I can do that right. Most of my favorite people are in fact children.
So that is why I’m here. Children can see better than adults. And by see, I mean to look at the world around them and see with amazement the things that most adults just walk on by. If more people knew how to keep that ability, there would be a whole lot more happy people. If you can see what’s amazing about life, it’s so much easier to handle the parts that aren’t quite so great.
bubbles in the back yard July 23, 2009, (c) RLL
