Four years ago this month...

I plunged into a new career. Head first, without looking back, dismissing naysayers as I ventured into a middle school for the first time in 30 years! This time, not as a student but as an 8th-grade language arts teacher. Without a degree in education... without having substituted... without having been around middle-schoolers since I was in 8th-grade three decades before! Eighth grade! Can you believe it?

You're probably wondering how I became a teacher without having a teaching degree or even substituting.... Aren't you? To save time and (hopefully) keep you from clicking on another blog, I'll give you the short version of my path to teacherdom.... I already held a bachelor's degree in communications and had a lot of experience as a writer. I had a little teaching experience by working with interns and guest lecturing at a local university. That's probably how the teaching bug bit me.

The bad news was that I would have to work my way through college again as a graduate student and spend endless evenings (three to five years worth of them) earning my teaching credentials. I just didn't want to wait that long. Instead, I chose an alternative program called TAPP, or Teacher Alternative Preparation Program.

After a summer "boot camp," where I learned the basics of classroom management, teaching, and curriculum design, I simply walked into my classroom and began to teach. Whew, was that tough! In addition to teaching each day, I attended some evening classes and seminars during my first two years of teaching, compiled a huge portfolio, was observed over and over and over again, and had to pass the necessary examinations, but the focus of TAPP was "on-the-job" training so-to-speak from the first day on.

It's been four years, and at the end of this year, my first class will be graduating from high school. But probably the strangest thing of all is that my daughter, who was going into 4th grade the year I began teaching, is going into 8th grade this year! She's the same age as my students.... my baby is one of them now!

Time passes by so quickly. Here I am during my first year of teaching....

This time next week, instead of enjoying a pajama day I'll be meeting the kids who'll be a big part of my life this year... nearly 100 of them... all with different personalities, talents, and stories that make each one unique. It will be up to me to discover each student's uniqueness by peeling back the layers of facades they have so carefully constructed over the years....

Sometimes it takes me half the school year or more to figure them out... what makes them tick, what ticks them off, what motivates them to learn (or at least to not socialize quite as much!). Each child is a mystery to unravel, all while I try to teach them what they need to learn this year... in literature and language arts.

Am I ready for them? I better be....

I'm a teacher now!