I started teaching when I was living Boston, I got a break, I think, because the woman whose job I took over had formally taught at Smith, where I had been an undergrad. She was getting her hip replaced and I took over teaching her classes in November. That job was one of the lucky breaks of my life, I had just gotten out of a serious relationship, I hated living in Boston, and I needed to find something to get me out of restaurant work. I was well-educated, a Smith degree, and a post-grad in interior design from the London Institute, but I had not found any practical application for my skill-set. The long-term sub job changed my life. I found I loved teaching and I was good at it; but I was lucky because I had excellent students and they were open to going wherever I wanted to take them, and I also got to teach AP art history, which was a personal interest of mine. This opportunity set me up perfectly for what I would find as a student at NYU doing my MA in art education and in the NYC public school system where I would work while I finished my MA.
Now after having spent 2 years in the public school system and 2 more in the charter school system I find myself packing up my beautiful morningside heights apartment and heading to Valparaiso Chile. My intentions are to spend my 29th year learning spanish, making art, teaching english, and ultimately setting myself up to find a teaching job in an international school. I leave in 7 days, it's exciting, but I've done this before and I know it is not easy, that it will be frustrating, and sometimes disappointing; but I am ready.
In this picture my charter school students have just made cave drawings on cardboard boxes, which we taped around their desks so they could feel like they were really making drawings inside a cave, some students got in the boxes and drew inside them.
No comments:
Post a Comment