What I want to be when I grow up

My wife and I have been talking quite a bit lately about our next career moves. She has her administration license and is looking for an assistant principal job. I will be going into my 9th year teaching next year and I have been at the same school the whole time (not counting a year I was a sub in Rockford, IL). If I am going to move to a new school or district, I need to do so in the next year or two in order to keep my pay where it is (other districts often only give you credit for a maximum of 10 years).

The problem is we are both feeling restless. She wants out of the classroom. I won't go into all the reasons why. She's not giving up on education. She just wants something new more than she wants to be in the classroom and if you don't love it in there, it makes a very difficult day-to-day living.

I'm not sure if I do want something new or not. I'm not really sure where I want to end up. My dilemma is more along the lines of trying to figure out where I want to be when I grow up (at 32 already).

I have a passive tendency from my father. He is a wonderful man and a great dad. He's been a speech pathologist in the same school district since I can remember. He's been coaching cross country and track at the same high school since, what seems like, the beginning of time. He's  very nice but generally passive individual. Its what makes him awesome, though. But, in me, it's what makes me unsure if I want to leave what I have. Do I try to find a new job in the district at a high school and try that out? That might help me if I want to try to teach in college. Do I want to teach in college? Where could I do that? What about a design firm or something? Am I even qualified?.... Now you see how my brain has been working and why I often stop thinking of it and just forge ahead with where I'm at. The options are vague and abstract. I don't see how any other path might work. I just cant picture it.

Let's list what I have and see if its worth risking or losing. I have an Art job at a fairly new (8 years old) middle school at the beginning of the eastern plains of Colorado. Its 10 minutes from my house, 30 from downtown Denver, and I can see the mountains from my classroom. I get to come up with and write whatever lessons I want to fulfill the standards. I have a decent budget, but dwindling every year. I have 6 classes a day of about 35-40 kids, which is becoming a lot with more kids in my class every year. I have to do duty everyday outside in the morning, which isn't bad when its nice. My school leadership drives me a little crazy, but my principal just announced he is retiring. Next year could be interesting because of this. All that being said about my school, I haven't experienced any other type of school, population of students, or ways of doing things. Maybe my school is amazing. Maybe it sucks. I don't have much to compare it to.

On another note, I also have a coaching gig at the high school next door. I coach cross country and track (except I took this year off from track with the baby and all). I built that program from 15 kids in last place to 50 strong and league champions. Tha'ts going to be very hard for me to give up. Its a passion. I love coaching and I love that team. That might actually be the hardest thing for me to walk away from if I have to/choose to leave for something else.

I also make a decent wage and am now responsible for a baby boy. It scares me to walk away from something so stable and put him at risk because I want to do something else possibly.

With all that being said and listed out and all the real positives that come with all that, there's still a lingering feeling I need to do something else, something more, something different. I feel like I am smart enough, cable enough, talented enough to do something bigger that would allow me greater opportunities. ( I sound like Stuart Smalley from SNL)

Maybe its because I keep listening to these podcasts that interview creative and successful people. They talk about their influences and daily rituals and how they got to be where they are. They've traveled, started businesses, written books, met with others of influence, etc. I listen to these people to try to figure out how I can take the next step, but recently I've just felt like these people are inadvertently mocking me. Its pointing out all the stuff I haven't done yet and didn't do when I was younger and might never do now that I'm older. Damn it! Its motivating but also depressing. How something can be both I don't know. I want to do something drastic and follow my passion and put in the work to become something new and better, but I'm not sure what that is, how to start, and if its too late. Maybe I'm too old, too set in my skill sets and experiences, too settled down with a family and debt and a house, etc. Don't get me wrong... I love my wife and son. I love my dog. I love where I live. But, those are all things I am responsible for and can't just up and go back to art school because I want to be a better painter or something.

All this leaves me wondering what my next step is going to be. Will I just stay here and teach art at the same school forever, coaching into the sunset? I can think of worse things, but the thought of that makes me just as nervous. I think there's more out there to experience. We only get one life in the flesh. I don't think I should spend it doing the same thing for 30+ years. I am not knocking those who do. If you are perfectly happy where you are, doing what you do, that seems fine to me. For me, though, I believe strongly that there's more out there. I just don't know what or where it is yet. Maybe that's okay. I am open to opportunity. I just wonder if I should give opportunity a nudge and in what direction.

School and Community reflections

I wrote the following in response to some reflection questions we were asked at school in my SLT meeting. I joined the SLT (school leadership team) this year in an effort to try to make some changes to our school from within. I am tired of complaining and whining. I need to make an effort. We are reading the book The Courage to Teach, which I don’t really like and find a lot of issues with. Anyways, these are the responses I wrote to the questions that proceed them. I know it’s going to push a couple buttons of my administration, but I think it’s not that crazy and needs to be said. It’s my truth even if it’s not the truth of others in my building. It’s not revolutionary or anything, but it’s about community and school and my feelings on how they need to overlap.

What structures at your institution promote a sense of disconnection from students, parents, colleagues, and the administration? What keeps us beholden to these structures?

One of the things I get frustrated with in our school, and see in other schools in the area, is an overall lack of community in a sense that there isn’t really an outside world for the students once they are within the school. They come to school, go through the assembly line of the day, and then go home. I realize we do more than that and it’s not that simple, but I feel that we often push away experiences and see them as less important than “class time” or time to study in the classes that will be most valuable to them for testing later on. I think this it is a wrong assumption to believe that experiences, trips, speakers, presentations, etc. are not as valuable. This chapter (chapter 2) discusses our fears and that what we fear holds us back as teachers. I think we fear the loss of time in place of an experience. Experiences and presentations don’t always hit a specific standard or “help them on the test”. But I remember the local symphony coming to my middle school to play and discuss music and how it affects our senses. I remember it vividly. The feeling when the music got loud and reverberated throughout the entire auditorium.  I remember smiling and looking at my friends who were as giddy as I was. I feel that it was extremely valuable to me in the development of my person. I remember seeing plays put on at my school by other school or travelling professionals, going to see a plays locally or in nearby cities, listening to inspirational speakers, watching school-wide talent contests, dance showcases, students groups going to different seminars to learn to become leaders or engineers, or whatever. I realize we have groups that try to create experiences. We have assemblies sometimes. We have spirit weeks, and fundraising for causes, etc. But what happens at the end of it? It almost always stops at our doors and doesn’t head out into the community. Taking my class to see some real 3D art by some great artists on a field trip at a great arts center was not celebrated as an opportunity for something amazing. It was seen as a hassle and a distraction to what should be happening. But in my opinion, THAT’s what should be happening. I am teaching them to prepare them to go out into the community and see and experience and explore. What are we here for otherwise? We go to school to learn and get good jobs and careers. But we need those so we can afford to experience life and the world!  There are so many places I want to take the students. I know the guys at Blake street glass who would probably demonstrate for us and show us live glassblowing and have them even participate. I would love so much to show them this. The Denver art museum, the outdoor art museum, the Denver tour of modern spec houses from the 1960’s, the Kirkland art museum, first Fridays, etc. This is where life is happening. I know the work we do is good and I know that we can, as teachers, make the learning experience fun and valuable and often they are. I see the great and amazing activities happening. But I think we can better prepare them to be part of an active community by bringing it into the building and also going out into it. Speakers, plays, causes, etc.

            Being a PVMS Tiger should mean more than being in a specific building to go to school. I think we need to create a small community of our own to make them feel comfortable out in theirs. But the community in our school and world outside of it can’t begin and end at the door’s threshold. Seneca, the Stoic philosopher, advocates taking on an issue and of whether or not to do something by making a list of worst case scenarios. You take those scenarios and write out what the damage would be. Then you write out how long it would take to get back to where you were. Often times this shows us that the risk is worth the reward because it’s not as risky as we thought. I realize in writing all this that I could go out and find these experiences and bring them in, but I think they need to be valued to do so. We hold on tight to our schedules and plans and standards to the point of strangling the life from them  and I am guilty as anyone. I worry about fitting in projects and will cut out valuable discussions and experiences for the sake of time and ease, but I shouldn’t and I know it. I know better but often get caught up in the day to day scheduling.

What negative images are there for today’s students?  What fears do young people face in today’s society?  And what are some positive traits for today’s students?

I think my answer to this question goes easily with the previous question. There are tons of negative images out there for students, most of which are created by social media and other forms of media found so easily in their pockets. This is another reason I feel it important for them to become a part of their community. The stuff happening on TV and on Facebook and other sites isn’t real life. It’s a hyped up version of it, sensationalized. But students aren’t experiencing their own neighborhood or area. They are experiencing a bizarre version of reality though a small screen plugged into the internet. A great number of the kids I took to Stuart Middle School for a basketball game had no idea it even existed where it did. That neighborhood was a foreign land to them. Stuart is 5 miles away at most. Denver, to them, is another state even though we can literally see it from my classroom. Everything else seems like another country. On my XC team I tell the new kids we are running to the Fairgrounds and they look at me like I’m crazy until I explain it’s literally 2 miles away. Not even that. There’ so much negativity and fear the students have access to now and they feel it is part of their world. It is, but not necessarily within their community. We all fear the apocalypse and what might happen, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news…. But it’s here. But it’s just not HERE. Terrible things are happening all over the world, but the area around our school is relatively safe and sound. Yes, it has its own issues, but how can we feel able to combat them in the face of the terrible things happening elsewhere? This question must be daunting to the students.

I think there are positive people and experiences within their communities all over if the kids know where to look and they can find them easier maybe with technology, but for all the great and good technology does for them, it hinders them in its ability to connect them to their own friends and people next door. I feel so sad when I see two friends hanging out and talking and one of them is on their phone, ear bud in, and only half listening. While a positive is that the kids are more “in the know” than I ever was at that age and can find the answers they needs, the support they need, and others like them, it also shuts them out of their own surroundings. This is why I feel the growing need for creating a better sense of community with those around them. All these things can be said of myself and our staff as well. I am not free of sin and stupidity. I am not free of the want to check  Facebook and email and read articles that only confirm my ideas of the world, but I have recognized it in myself and try to resist. I think as a staff we can create a better sense of community, too. There are opportunities and I don’t always take them. That’s true. But I am speaking in generalities and hopes for our own peers that needs to include on effort on my part as well.

Dream Job aka... The job I had in my dream

It seems I keep writing about my dreams, but since I am doing my writing in the early morning, that’s what’s on my mind. I’m also trying harder to remember my dreams as I would like to have a lucid one. I kept a journal in college for a short period of time in an effort to do this. I began remembering everything, up to several dreams a night. I still remember some of them as if they were real memories. I eventually had to stop to get some actual rest as it started to get out of hand, but I am interested in going back to that place. I have always been interested in Surrealism and the use of dreams and dream images for use in art. I would like to get back to making more art, thus….. dreams.

My dream last night wasn’t a long one. I can tell you where some of the images come from and why they are there, but what’s most interesting to me is the feeling I had during and after the dream.

In the dream, the earliest part of it I can remember, I had just gotten a job. It was at an advertising agency. I was in our first meeting and I think I had been hired a few minutes before that. I remember thinking I hadn’t even quit my other part time job yet or something to that effect. I think I was approaching this job from a part-time point of view, but the boss-man thought I was full time. That will come into play later.

The meeting was is a relatively small room. There were about 12 people in there in black office swivel chairs around a cheap wooden office table. The chairs weren’t those big comfortable ones. They are the low-backed ones with cloth covers, not leather or even fake leather. But they were comfortable, like they were brand new. It was a little cramped in there… very little room between the wall and chairs. Everyone was wearing very dark business clothing. It seemed even darker in the bright white walls and fluorescent lights. Everyone was in pairs or small groups they would work together on accounts in. The woman I was with was blond with her hair pulled up and wearing a black sport coat jacket over a black blouse. Upon reflection after the dream, she looked just like the main lady lawyer from Better Call Saul.

The boss guy started going over the accounts we needed to figure out and work on. This part was exciting for me. I was excited about which account we would get and what we would do with it. I have very fleeting images in my head of some of the ideas I had and sketched out. Something to do with black silhouettes on white backgrounds and mixed up… hard to explain the image, although I believe a rubber duck silhouette was in it. The boss went over schedules and calendars and some timelines as we began to wrap up the meeting. I remember at one point we had to start over as we had completely forgotten about Christmas. I turned and asked my partner in the account what I should work on over the weekend to get ready. I was excited and was hoping she would say to list some ideas, or sketch, or something. She said not to worry about it and that she would handle it. She seemed a little miffed and upset. I thought maybe it was getting paired with me, a newbie. She left abruptly without saying anything to me.

I realized at the end of the meeting that I had to talk to the boss about my hours and that I was really just looking for part time. Then I had the thought that maybe I should quit my teaching job and just start this full time. I actually went through what that scenario would look like and entail. In my dream it gave me a very excited and happy feeling. I woke up with that.

I’ve always been interested in advertising. I originally thought about going to school for it. It’s not that I want to be manipulative of people. It’s that I really enjoy creative problem solving. It combines everything I love doing…. Art, design, visual and mental puzzles, figuring people out, etc. There was a show that used to be on after Mad Men called Ad Men. It was two ad agencies battling over a client by pitching their best ideas and campaigns to them. I loved that show. I really enjoyed watching the process. What I found most interesting about my dream was the feeling I had in it that carried over to me being awake. I was really happy and excited about the job. I was looking forward to working. I actually looked up jobs in the shower on my phone just to see. I haven’t felt that excited about a job or work in many years. I suppose I have some reflecting and thinking to do.

Vivid Dream

I actually got to get in some decent sleep last night, something hard to come by this week. Because of this I was able to have a pretty weird but mostly entertaining dream.

The first thing I can remember from the dream was that my neighbor, Paul, and my brother, Blake, and I were at some large outdoor market. It looked like a big food court, but it was outside. It was almost like being at some food festival or something, but it seemed to be a permanent structure. It was dusk and the lights were turning on. The setting reminded me of some scene from a Neil Gaiman book or a Jack Vance story. To the left was some establishment that seemed like mix between a Harley Davidson rally, and old-timey saloon, and a modern country western bar. People were hanging out, drinking, talking. It took up a pretty large area. There were some dudes to our right with their shirts off practicing line dancing as if they were about to take the stage for a show or something. I questioned what we were doing and if we had happened upon a strip club or something. We decided to investigate and realized it was a "professional" barber shop. We kept tossing out that word, "professional", as if it meant something more or needed to be capitalized. We finally made out way to that back where the haircuts were happening. There were a bunch of chairs and guy cutting other guys’ hair quickly and efficiently while people watched and cheered and drank. We decided to get some trims, although Paul has no hair. We didn't quite have enough cash (and they only took cash), we realized, but (apparently) its common practice for the barbers to take a little bit less money if you pay them under the table in cash. All Paul had was a check. We decided to pitch in all our cash and checks to try to get haircuts. Paul struck up a conversation with one of the barbers by a long, beige counter, under a string of yellow lights, at the front of a huge white tent lit up by lanterns.  He was an older Russian man. Paul signed over his check to him, which was a little oversized and was green with orange borders. It was a check for 30 dollars from his work. The older barber said he would take less than the advertised price if it was cash and that this was a common practice among “professional” barbers, but that we need to keep it quiet. He said he would call us and we left.

In the next moment of my dream it was just my brother and I. We were in downtown Rockford, IL, where I'm from. He was being weird and aloof and seemed very young. Upon reflection, I think this is pretty symbolic of our real relationship. We don’t talk as much as I’d like. He has his own life and world and it makes me sad. I still see him as my little brother, but he’s almost 30. I often wish we could go back in time so I could try to sure up our relationship. It seemed we had some free time before we were going to meet up with our family. I asked him where he wanted to go. He said he wanted to go to a building that was near our old church, downtown. This area is NOT a good part of town and there is a lot of crime and issues in this area. When we were kids we didn’t notice much. We just parked at the church, crossed the street, and went in. It was when we got older we realized the surrounding area had gotten bad. I told him maybe we shouldn't walk around down there. He said he wanted to check out the building because it had been shot up in a drive-by.... in my eyes, confirming my position of not going. But off we went. Quickly, though, the dream brought us to Chicago. We were downtown Chicago outside the big Macy's or Marshall Field's or whatever it is now. It didn’t look like Chicago, but we knew it was. I thought maybe we should grab a snack. I mentioned finding a place that sold cinnamon rolls or something. We decided to go in to the department store instead and walk around a little. We both used to go there with our parents as kids to see Santa. (Rockford is only about 2 hours from Chicago and we usually took the train in from Harvard). We went in, but the giant department store seemed more like a really crowded old house. A big house... but really crowded and old. There were racks of weird clothes everywhere. It actually felt like one of those county home stores or a craft fair or something. Like all the clothes had been handmade from fabrics found at Michael's. I found a table that had some cookies and a few M & M's. I grabbed a couple of the M & M’s but left the cookies as they were wrapped and I wasn’t sure they were free. I then realized I was holding my little baby son and he was starting to get upset. He needed to be changed. Everything was super crowded and I couldn't find a bathroom or anything. I headed down to the main floor and ended up in a basement, which felt like really any home basement. The kind you hung out in with your friends in high school. Low ceiling, shitty old green carpet, a used up couch, and a Formica counter and sink left over from when someone started to renovate and stopped. I headed for the counter where a teen-aged girl was standing in front of a mirror. She was putting in her retainer and upon seeing me freaked out and ran away. I then realized I was in the staff lounge area. But it was too late. I needed to change my son, so I did. Soon enough a bunch of my friends (none of them whom I recognized) found me and we laughed about how we were hanging out in the staff lounge. We stayed down there for a while and I told them about the girl with the retainer freaking out.

As far as dreams go, it was pretty good. Not scary or crazy, but not overly stimulating. Very vivid, though. It never quite got to lucid. The least vivid part, but the part that stuck with me the most was the stuff with my brother. It makes me want to call him today, and I think I will. I’m not sure dreams really mean all that much, but maybe they give us messages we should listen to sometimes.

Strange Dreams

I had two dreams last night I can remember quite a bit of.

The first, I feel, was a combination of a few TV shows I watched last night before bed. I was some sort of secret spy or agent of some sort. I was watching myself from outside my body as a third person (which would also relate to the TV show thing). I was with my wife and daughter (which I don’t actually have) in an apartment, housed in a large brick apartment building complex. It was on the 3^rd floor of the building. I remember this because I ran up the stairs of it several times. The very last time I ran up them to my apartment there was definitely some M.C. Escher stuff happening. I told my daughter I’d be back later and my wife and I just exchanged glances. I left and went to go get into one of two helicopters waiting. One was a slightly larger, orange helicopter. The other was black. They were both extremely narrow and had no landing gear. They also were both really wobbly and seemed to work like toys. “We”, (who ever I was with… I’m not sure due to third person viewing) were on our way to go blow something up. I think we were going to blow up a garbage truck or something weird like that. Unfortunately we’d been discovered and a group of suited men were on our tail. The next thing I know I am racing through my apartment complex to warn my wife to hide.

That’s it. That’s the dream. It wasn’t particularly strange, but I found it very calm, despite how intense it could have been. I think its because I was watching in third person. It was also weird that I was probably the bad guy.  Don’t know that that means.

The second dream I had seems to be part of an ongoing series of dreams where I go back to college. In this case, I wasn’t thrust back to freshman year as in the other ones I’ve had. In this one I was just going back to school as me right now.

The school I was at was supposedly Wisconsin, but the field house where most of the dream took place was pretty old, crowded, and beat up. It was like Colorado University’s old field house, but with tons of equipment and people. This field house is incredibly vivid and I could take you on a tour of it right now or build a movie set based on it. It apparently doubled as the rec center where everyone worked out. I remember trying to find the locker room to get changed and enter the field house. Once I was in there I was crossing the indoor track and I almost got ran over by a line of girls moving pretty damn fast. I realized that the Wisconsin team was having practice/time trials. I recognized two of the athletes hanging out as a couple of the seniors from the high school cross country team I coach.  I recognized another as one of the 7^th grade girls I coach in basketball. Apparently she was in college. I thought nothing of it. One of the first things I noticed was that most of the runners had a small blanket over their shoulders. When I said hi to one of my athletes they told me it was a team tradition to have a blankie. We laughed and I told him it was cool that he was already feeling like a part of the team and that it seemed like they would be a lot of fun. Then I saw a bunch of runners surround my 7th grade girl athlete, we'll cal her B. She used her feet to roll up a towel really fast into a kind of pillow. A bunch of the girls acted semi-impressed and cheered. One of the other girls on the team seemed to be the judge of whether B id it right or not. It seemed to be another tradition of theirs. She picked it up and tested it out, approving of B’s job. My athletes and a couple others came with me as I walked around the field house to take a tour. There were weight benches and people running around, working out. I remember in my dream at this time hoping someone would ask me to join the team. I wanted to be asked and then be asked to train with them and get back on a team and run track at Wisconsin. Silly idea, but its what I wanted in my dream. Peaking over a small ledge separating the weight room area and the basketball courts, I saw the guys and girls team practicing together. I guess practicing would be a strong word for what they were doing. They were crawling on their knees and elbows. It seemed that they were in trouble and this was the punishment… not sprints, but crawls. It looked painful. Near the end of my dream, I was heading back over by the track team. I saw their coach and then I saw my dad come up and shake his hand and start talking with him. I called out to him. He seemed surprised to see me. My dad looked great. He was 20 years younger, taller, and in great shape. He seemed very happy. He asked what I was doing there. I told him I decided to go back to school. He asked what I was going to study…. I had no answer for this and then my dream ended.

I’m not sure what it means to keep having dreams about going back to college. My wife and I just got done with all that again as she now has a Master’s and her Administration license to become a principal. I, too, also now have my Master’s degree in Art and Design with an emphasis in Art Education. I thought I might be done with school, but I keep having dreams of going back. It’s the good kind of going back though. It’s not the school you sign up for later in life and do all the work at home while still maintaining a job. It’s the kind of going back to school where you actually get to go back to college itself and it seems like a blast. I’ll have to think more about why I am having these dreams. Do I was to go back to school? Do I want teach in college? I’m not sure, but I don’t mind these dreams. They’re pretty fun.