My Dream Job

30 Things My Kids Should Know About Me #7:

What is your dream job, and why?

Lucky for me, my dream job is exactly what I'm doing right now... but I never would have known it was my dream job until I got to do it. Motherhood is exhausting, thankless, terrifying, around-the-clock insanity, and it is the hardest thing I have ever done. But it is also the most rewarding, loving, and eternal job anyone could ever have.

That being said, my dream career (as in I-get-paid-for-what-I-went-to-school-for-and-am-actually-qualified-to-do-it) is being a school teacher. Again, lucky for me, I got a chance to do this in my lifetime. I went to college and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies from Westmont College in Santa Barbara. I then moved home and attended Chapman University to attain my teaching credential in elementary education.

I spent a total of almost three years substitute teaching -- in between classes, observations, and my own student teaching. Then I won a third grade position in King City. The following year I taught fifth grade at Atascadero's Fine Arts Academy until the end of January 2009 as I anxiously awaited the arrival of my first beauty, Kealani.

That's all the teaching I wound up doing. To be perfectly honest, it's all I believe I will ever do, at least as an official classroom teacher. I loved my job. Now that I have done both, I am convinced that being a teacher (of any kind) is the closest position anyone could have to being a parent. (I assume being an aunt could shimmy its way in between the two, but that is something I've yet to experience!) The time, love, encouragement, instruction, counsel, entertainment, frustration, and desire to see your student achieve his/her best comes only second to that student's actual parents' own. (And unfortunately, sometimes it's first.)

Teaching is not a job you can "leave at the office". My concerns, as well as pride over my students' accomplishments, followed me home each night. My grading and planning followed me home. My desire to give my students the best I could reached into my own pocketbook. When you are influencing other people's lives, especially young people's, it burns its way into your consciousness and never leaves. I still think about my first set of students and it's already been five years since I taught their class. I wonder what they're doing now that they are in eighth grade. I hope that they have stayed away from their city's gangs, and have managed not to become too friendly with the opposite sex.

I loved teaching because I was good at it. I'm not bragging, I just firmly believe that there are specific things we are created to do. While there are countless jobs I would be horrible at, I was created to teach, and I felt comfortable and successful in it. I commanded a room full of 20-33 students at a time, kept their attention, got them to do what I asked, instilled knowledge in their tiny brains, and loved every minute of it. There are aspects of teaching that take away from the students. I hated these, as every teacher does. These aspects are only growing worse, which is why I don't for a second wish I was back in the classroom as opposed to being at home with my precious 4 and 1 year olds.

Sometimes I wonder why I went through all the school and training I did only to end up being a classroom teacher for 1 1/2 years. I don't regret it, I just wonder what it was for. I hope and pray that it was for the influence I had in those classrooms of students' lives during the time I was their teacher. I hope and pray my experience dealing with kids of all ages helps me to be a better mom, and gives me compassion for my girls' teachers when they begin school.

I'm a mom. I'm still a teacher. I get to do both of my dream jobs every single day, and I am immensely thankful for that.