Wake Up!

After high school, I began undergrad studies at PSU as a business major. That was sort of a passive, default choice for me, since I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life, and it seemed "safe." The country runs on business, I told myself, so there will always be jobs for me there. Well, yes, there were jobs, but after a couple of decades doing them, I felt empty, unfulfilled. I felt like I was finally waking up in a strange place after a very long sleep and wondering how I got there, and how I was going to get back to...? Where was it that I wanted to go? What am I doing in my career that has any sort of meaning for myself as well as others, I wondered. How am I making a difference?

The fact that I felt this way and was asking myself these kinds of questions meant that I was at a crossroads, a crisis of fulfillment, and a breakthrough, all rolled up into one. The process of finding my calling would require a lot of soul-searching and reflection, but I knew I needed to move on. I had been at a staffing service for nearly nine years, managing the larger accounts we had with a virtual who's who of eastside businesses, plugging people needing jobs into mostly entry-level production work assembling multi-tools and winches, packing boxes, filling orders.
Most made $9/hr or less, barely enough.

And I often found myself wondering how different the lives of our employees might have been had they been more invested in their education, if they had been encouraged and inspired to aim higher, to ask and expect more of the world and of themselves. This turned out to be one of several signposts pointing me in the direction of education. Another was the time I heard an OPB broadcast of a speech by Jonathan Kozol. I was on my way to Thriftway to get a couple of things for dinner, and he was mesmerizing. It was like a rallying call, making the case that America desperately needs its bright, educated and motivated people to join its education system to make a real difference in society, to temper the inequities, to help achieve social justice. I sat in the parking lot listening, unable to tear myself away. Jonathan was speaking passionately, and directly, to me!

So, I'm here to answer that call. I'm here because in teaching I see the power to affect positive change in others, to make a difference. And I'm here because I know that by serving students, their families, the school community, I will also be serving my needs for meaning and fulfillment.