Last week, I worked at Youth Leadership Forum, a leadership camp for high school juniors and seniors with disabilities that I've been a part of for the past six summers. As always, camp was inspiring, fun, and exhausting. One of the questions we helped campers ponder this summer was, "What is a good life to you?" We, as counselors, prompted campers to think of their life after high school and to begin making decisions about housing, schooling, jobs, and other important aspects of "adult life". While helping campers make plans for their futures, I found myself re-evaluating some of my life goals, as well.
I've been offered an opportunity to teach a blended full-day Pre-K class at a public elementary school here in Norman next year (although I technically won't be starting until October because I'll be on maternity leave). "Blended" means that I will be teaching ten typically developing kiddos and five students with special needs in the same class. Also, this is the first time that Norman Public Schools has offered full-day Pre-K. (Normally, classes are split into a morning and an afternoon class. I'll actually have the same students all day next year.) And, for the first time in four years, I'll be at
one school with the same job all day. No more eating lunch in the car, no more switching gears and grade levels completely at noon, and only
one set of lesson plans. Y'all. I'm sure that these are all things which most people take for granted, but for me, they're huge. I'm also looking forward to teaching at this particular school because of the high-needs clientele of it. I used to romanticize the idea of teaching in a school with 90+ percentage of its students qualifying for free or reduced lunch prices, and although I now better understand the many challenges that come with teaching students in poverty, I really can't wait to serve this often-overlooked population in an otherwise middle-class city and district.
Lately, I have been swinging on the pendulum between the ideas of staying home and continuing to work full-time. For next year, I'm committed to my job. But as Piper has gotten older, I've started to feel like I'm missing out somewhat on her life as she is at school and I am at work all day. Admittedly, I'm not much of a newborn person, but the more interactive she has become in the past few months, the more I have wished I was around to see her developments and milestones. We will continue to take one year at a time as far as work goes, but one thing I have decided for sure is that I am not going to continue pursuing my master's degree at this time.
This was a tough decision, and I really hate having to swallow my pride. As I continued to think about my reasons for doing grad school, though, I realized that most of them didn't make a whole lot of sense. Part of me wanted to get my degree because, according to Andrew's family, "the Fenricks marry up." His brother and sister both married people who are more educated than they are, and I felt that I needed to "continue the tradition," even though it's not really a tradition and no one in his family is putting any pressure on me to do that. Part of me wanted to get my degree because people in my profession will think I'm awesome and intelligent. Truth be told, there are fantastic public school Pre-K teachers who have a master's degree, and there are equally good ones who do not. Finally, I think a small part of me wanted to recreate the college experience, which, as I quickly discovered, cannot be recreated as a graduate student. The four years of college undergraduate life truly are one-of-a-kind. Oh, and I'm not completely sure that I want to be a reading specialist, which is what my degree would help me achieve. Grad school is too much time and money to not be sure about something like that. Aside from everything else, higher education is no longer an individual commitment; it is a decision that involves the whole family. Perhaps there will be time, years down the road, when my whole family can more easily commit to this decision.
When I think about my "good life," it is right now, watching my little girl "mow the yard" in her panties (because hey, she's potty-trained now!) with her dad. It's having time to make supper for my family instead of popping a frozen pizza in the oven. It's possessing energy at the end of the day to smile at Piper when she does something silly instead of getting frustrated with her because I'm out of steam. It's saying "no" to being a stellar student so I can say "yes" to being a good teacher, wife, and mom. And yes, sometimes it is watching Netflix instead of working on an end-of-semester presentation. No shame in stating the obvious. :)
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| I'm giving birth in less than six weeks. NBD. |
