I Am a Teacher

by Lucy S.

The last time I wrote here, I was on my way to an interview to find out about teaching my very first college class next fall.  It went better than any other job interview I’ve had, and he asked me to begin work on a syllabus to show him that I could create this for that composition / literature course. I came home thrilled that I really had a chance!!  I worked on the syllabus until Friday, pretty much from morning till night, though some of my time was spent writing to a good friend about all my doubts that I could do it and so many fears and old negative memories that came flooding back at certain moments.  And yet, as I worked at it, it was such a joy. It felt like what I have been waiting for most of my adult life.  In those days, I was actually turning into a college teacher.

This morning, the professor who interviewed me emailed me back to say that he was offering me a section to teach. I will really get to teach there.  All day, I’ve walked around with a big smile.  I’m so amazed, so profoundly thankful and happy that I will actually get to teach there. 

Years ago, during my first semester at Antelope Valley (community) College in California, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. And for so many years, I carried that aching hope within me. It’s hard to understand what our psyches do when we want something so badly and the time comes when it is so close, and everything seems to hang in the balance. Yesterday, I could feel my mind already trying to think of other things to want – trying to not want THIS so unreservedly.  But I couldn’t substitute something else. I could only wait.

In the post about homeschooling and teaching, in which I wanted to know why my experience teaching my kids wouldn’t count as ‘real’ experience, I anguished over why it shouldn’t count, and I proclaimed that I would ask this professor why it shouldn’t count – or if it could. But in the end, sitting there talking with him about why I wanted to teach the class and what I imagined for it and my own abiding interest in the writing process, I didn’t ask about counting my homeschool-teaching experience. I know him from an independent study course we did, and I realized that it would somehow not do justice to my experience with him to ask that question – even to ask it in a less aggressive way. Sometimes, we have to trust people, trust them deeply.

I have always had times when I stumbled in this regard, not trusting those who deserve that trust. But then I also do get up and run forward to trust again.  We do so often come through for each other, really. Once again, I am thinking about what my friend Dan always says; “Try for everything – make others tell you no.”  This advice has served me well.  I recommend it with all my heart.

From September to December this year, I will be a teacher teaching a composition course on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. We will talk about literature and the writing process and why these efforts matter.