My Next Career

Five months ago I started a new job. Five months is long enough to now have some actual opinions and thoughts about how things are going. But before I write about those, it feels important for me to at least recognize that something big has shifted in my life.

For 25 years I was a teacher. I taught English in Yemen for 2 years, I was a teaching Naturalist at Brandywine Creek State Park in Delaware for a year, I taught severely emotionally disturbed teens in Delaware for 4 months, I taught Outdoor Education in Massachusetts for a year, I taught preschool in Montana for 3 years, I taught teens at an in-patient psych ward in Montana for a summer, I taught carpentry, construction, backpacking, and rock-climbing skills in Montana for 5 summers, I taught Special Education in Upstate New York for 3 years, I taught English and Global Studies Upstate for 3 years, I taught fifth and sixth graders in Connecticut for 7 years, and then back to preschool in Ithaca for a year.

In retrospect, I can say that I was a good teacher.  I was patient.  I was dedicated to my students. I kept myself informed on many topics. I communicated well with parents. I was a good colleague. I taught by example. I was willing to follow tangents if they were interesting and productive. I listened to my kids. I helped them see that testing is a game adults make kids play, and test scores are NOT a valid yardstick with which to measure a child. In the end, it was a great run.  The highlight for me was getting to have my daughter, Isabel, in my class for a year. It was a pretty great year.

But after all of that, I have nothing tangible to show for it.  There is not one thing I can point to and say with certainty, “I did that.” The successes are invisible, as are the failures. I have the kind words of parents in the end-of-the-year cards they sometimes give to teachers, but they are not concrete, either.  If I reread them, I can feel good, but still I cannot hold in my hand one thing I have created as a teacher.

For 25 years, that was okay with me. It was a job full of rewards and I truly loved it. For the last ten years there was not one day where I said to myself, ‘I would rather not be a teacher today.’ I know that is hard to believe, but it is true.

As we moved to Ithaca 18 months ago I started to play with the idea of getting out of teaching and into something else.  I was not sure quite what I wanted to do, but I could tell that teaching was nearing the end of its rewarding life.  I was starting to feel a bit run down from having to always care so much.  As a teacher, I could feel the weight and power my words and attitudes had. When you are a teacher there is no room for casual remarks or jokes at the expense of a student.  There is no room for tuning out while a student tells you about something they find important. You have to care—all the time. And, in the end, I knew I was getting tired of caring so much all the time.  I wanted to be able to let my guard down, to tune out of boring conversations, to poke a little fun without worrying if someone was strong enough to take it.

In the end, I feel like I did a lot more good than harm as a teacher and I did not want to skew the balance of that equation by remaining in the classroom too long.  There is nothing worse than a bitter teacher.

So, now I am a writer! And I am loving it. I am working for Cornell Engineering in the Marketing and Communications Department and mostly what I get to do is find fascinating people and write about them. My boss took a real gamble and hired me with no professional experience. And because she did, I get to learn all sorts of amazing science, I get to talk to geniuses, and then I get to close my door, not care at all about anyone for hours, and write words. After a while, the words show up out in the world, on websites and in magazines. There is a finished product I can point to and other people can judge. It is so different for me—and so good—to be able to share something I have done for work.

It is good to have specific tasks, to have deadlines, and to get concrete feedback in the moment on how I am doing. As a teacher the feedback is clear as you watch your kids.  You know if they are bored, if they are confused, if they are getting it. But that feedback has as much to do with their internal states as it does with your teaching. The other feedback you get as a teacher is test scores, administrator evaluations, and that inner-voice that lets you know how you are doing.  None of these is a truly objective measure of your ability as a teacher.

As a writer, my bosses and editors can tell me if something is unclear, too long, too informal, wrong on the facts, or just plain NOT what they were looking for. And then I can go back and make it more clear, shorter, more formal, correct, or more like what they were looking for. And I can do this by myself, in a room, without having to take anyone’s feelings into account. I feel remarkably free in this new job. After 25 years without direct, in-the-moment criticism of my work, I find it refreshing and very helpful to get feedback right away.

Another thing I love about my job is that I have an audience. If most teachers are honest, part of the thrill of teaching is being on stage every day. You have a captive audience for your brilliance, your jokes, and your special insights. But it is a small audience, and it is also there when you are having a bad day. As a writer, my larger audience only gets to see my edited work after it goes through several drafts and several critics. The crappy stuff doesn’t make it onto the website or into the magazine. I get a real thrill out of seeing my name in the by-line.

Another huge benefit of changing careers at the age of 48 is that I get to learn all sorts of new things. And, as an ex-teacher, I know the value of learning new things.  It keeps a brain young and makes me happier.  I feel pushed and challenged and excited about work.

So, I am happy to report that I loved being a teacher for 25 years, and I am also very happy to report that I love being a writer.

Now What?

Yesterday I had a very good day at work.  My kids were nice to each other, they shared their toys willingly, they cleaned up when they were done, and I left feeling very good about working with small children.  Some days are just like that.

Then I turned on the radio and heard the first reports coming out of Newtown, Connecticut.  They mentioned 18 dead school children and it hit me like a hammer blow.  I started crying and couldn’t stop for a long time.  I pictured someone coming into my school and intentionally shooting my kids and I was dumbstruck.  How could anyone put bullets in innocent children?  This man didn’t just spray bullets randomly.  He executed those poor children.

My first instinct was to call my wife, but she is in Israel and out of phone contact, so I e-mailed her instead and continued to cry as I listened to radio coverage of the massacre.  My next instinct was to get on Facebook and rail against guns.  Whenever this sort of mass killing happens, it is just about always with a gun.  You rarely see massacres carried out by a knife-wielding killer or a machete-carrying madman.  Semi-automatic handguns and rifles make it easy to shoot a lot of people in a short time without having to get close to them.  If these guns were rare and difficult to procure legally, there would be fewer mass shootings.  That is a fact.

About an hour after I heard the news, Erica managed to borrow a phone in Israel and she called me, distraught and teary.  Our conversation soon got to the question on my mind: “what can we do to stop this shit?”  I know deeply in my heart that America is a society with an unhealthy fascination with both guns and violence.  We ban buttocks on tv but allow grisly scenes of violence.  You can’t say “shit” over the airwaves but you can show blood-soaked victims lying on the floor of any weeknight drama or police procedural. 

I also know deeply in my heart that the Founding Fathers really did intend for citizens to be able to own guns as a defense against tyranny.  However, I also feel pretty certain they did not mean for this right to bear arms to be unregulated.  The most advanced killing technology at the time of the writing of the US Constitution was all single-shot.  There were cannon, howitzers, mortars, and muskets and all had to be reloaded after each shot fired.  Second Amendment radicals today argue that any regulation of firepower or magazines is unconstitutional.  This argument is ridiculous.  If you take it to its most absurd length you end up arguing for the right of citizens to own anti-aircraft guns and shoulder-launched missiles.  Is that REALLY what the Second Amendment protects?

One thing I can do in response to the tragic waste of life in Newtown is to contact local, state, and national lawmakers and push for meaningful regulation of gun purchases and magazine capacities available to civilians. If you add together all of the gun murders in the 23 wealthiest countries of the world, fully 87% of the children killed are in the United States.  What does this say about us?  I do not have much faith in the politicians of this country to take any sort of meaningful legislative stance against the gun lobby, but I feel like I need to express myself to them anyway.  Maybe THIS time the horror of what happened will be enough to give lawmakers the spine needed to buck the NRA?  I doubt it, but remaining silent will make it that much less likely.

I am realizing this morning that the most effective and, in the short term, least satisfying action I can take is to respond to the people around me with love and respect.  The common traits these shooters seem to share are an overpowering wish to be seen and a desire to feel powerful.  With a gun in hand, they feel like God.  And with the wall-to-wall coverage, they are certainly seen.  I do not believe anyone I know right now is a potential mass murderer.  But people who knew Adam Lanza, James Holmes, Dylan Klebold, or other shooters probably would have said the same thing.  It is not an easy thing to do, but I can work hard to respond to the people I meet each day with love and kindness.

In the end, that is really all most of us can do.  As President Obama mentioned in his short statement yesterday, we can hug our children, tell them we love them, and then put politics aside and work to make further tragedies like this less likely.   The work I feel that I can do is simply to be more compassionate with people I meet every day.  Beyond that, I feel lucky to have a job that allows me to help 3-year olds learn how to deal with anger and frustration every day.  It is part of my job description to love small children and listen to them, and, while listening. to help them deal with the frustrations that arise from living in a world where you don’t always get your way. 

Maybe that makes me lucky.  I have a way to respond to this tragedy that feels real and immediate and effective.  When I get to work Monday morning you can bet I will have a bit more patience and a much deeper appreciation for each of the young lives I touch.  My hope is that those with different jobs, like Representatives, Senators, and the President, will also step up and do what their jobs allow them to do.  They are elected to carry out the will of the People, and the People want to live in a society where massive firepower is harder to acquire and our children are safe at school.