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I should have been a teacher. Trying to fully re-enter the workforce after raising children most of the way up, and the difficulties that comes with, I realize what it would’ve meant. Once into first grade, they’d simply remember me at home after school and with them in the summer.
When I was ten, I told my mother that I wanted to be a teacher. She responded with profound disappointment and said, dragging the words out slowly, “Oh, Georgia. Don’t be a teacher.” Surprised by her reaction, I asked her why, but I don’t remember her answer. It’s probably too vague to recall it. Now I imagine, she must’ve had a bad experience.
I’ve always hesitated to say what should’ve been because there doesn’t seem to be any good in wishing for a different past. But I’m saying it now. I should’ve been a teacher. I’d be a good one. I’d have been a better teacher than I am a blogger, with my fits and starts the last 14 years. And I’m certainly not the published novelist I wanted to be by now.
We are looking toward educating three “littles” in the United States college system, the eldest starting her sophomore year of college soon, so when I briefly considered getting a library science degree five years ago, I felt I had to put it out of my mind. That notion is the same with a teaching certification.
My next best option, I think, is to find a non-certified position at the high school. (I have applied.) I enjoy the school environment and the well-oiled machine working throughout the year. Littles two and three are both enrolled in the high school, and Little one was asked by her French teacher to come back as a teacher’s aide. You see what this means, don’t you? I may have the chance to be at the high school with all three of them. I never imagined I might have that opportunity.
I am teaching, in a way, since recently becoming a volunteer literacy tutor at the library. In the East Bay of San Francisco, this means there’s a long wait-list, 100+ people just in our town. I’ve always respected those who leave the comfort of their own country to make a life where they don’t know the language, even get a driver’s license for he first time ever at 40 years old. Imagine the DMV with a language barrier. That takes some chutzpah.
The very first thing I wanted to be, which I never told my mother, was a detective. My friend tells me that’s what a writer is.
What should you have been? Or maybe you already are?
The Back Forty in Sunshine 