Listen and learn, Grasshopper

I had a meeting yesterday and now that it seems things are rolling in the right direction, I'm inclined to share.

I am headed back to school and getting my Bachelor of Education degree.

I want to teach. I want to inspire. I want to be inspired. I want to be surrounded everyday by opportunities to learn and to help others find those moments. I want to be a positive influence. I want to see through as many eyes as possible. I want to be kept young and made to feel old at the same time.

I am passionate, driven, motivated, and patient. I am able to command attention. (Someone just choked on her coffee, right A.D?) I am contagious in my enthusiasm. I am a naive idealist. In other words, I am completely out of my mind.

It was not a decision made lightly. In fact, it has taken me ten years to do it. I needed to be sure. I needed to know that I was doing it for the right reasons. I hated those teachers that were only three years older than me who had never experienced anything beyond their own formal education. I hated those people who didn't know what they wanted or didn't really care what they did and chose teaching so they'd have summers off, people who took drama as a fine art elective because they thought it would be easy. Those people whined when it was more than putting on a silly hat and saying "doth" a lot. They still irk me. And their students deserved someone who wanted to be there, who wanted to teach them, who wanted to hear them, instead of just themselves. Being there for the wrong reasons wasn't an option for me. Teaching is a vocation. Teenagers are incredible people with incredible ideas and helping them learn how to think (not telling them, but guiding them to think for themselves) is an incredible responsibility.

Now, I have lived a bit, traveled a bit, and have been searching a whole lot. I am an actor and a writer. And I need something more. I need to feel I'm making a contribution. People find their niche in all sorts of places.

But when I made the decision on this place, I heard the click. And the support coming in has been amazing! When I tell people, they, of course, say "Good for you." Then they stop to think for a moment before adding, "You'd be a great teacher," as though, they hadn't thought about it before but it makes sense. And that's exactly what I need to believe. (If you think I'll be terrible, please don't tell me just yet.... :-)

The meeting was good - I had made sure that I had the classes I would need to get into Education before I left school - so the track to a second degree is much shorter for me come September and admission shouldn't be difficult. This time two years from now, I could be a certified teacher of Drama and English and Russian.

I could also be screaming, "Stop it. STOP IT. I don't care. Get on the bus. GET. ON. THE. BUS."

But, hey, at least I'll get summers off. :-)