Origin Story: An Ode to Broken Bones.

In job interviews, I always started with the broken collarbone because it played pretty well. But in reality, my journey in teaching started maybe a year before that.

I was in my mid-20s and a handful of my best friends had already started teaching. They’d talk about their job at parties and it always seemed more interesting, and more fulfilling, than any of the other jobs I’d tried my hand at. It also kind of helped that I graduated college right when the first dot-com bust occurred, and trying to enter the job market in the Bay Area at that time was about as easy as cutting your own hair: you could try if you really wanted, but nobody was going to be happy with the results.

So for narrative purposes, it started with a broken collarbone at a softball game. It was mid-May, and I had wrapped up my English teaching credential program at SFSU. I’d met some good people in my cadre and really enjoyed the experience. I was still figuring a lot out about myself, but when the rubber hit the road in the classroom, it felt *right* to me. I’d been student teaching in a couple of rooms – one basic 9th grade English class, one 11th grade Honors English class – and it felt good, if not overwhelming. One of my master teachers managed to wrangle an open section of English for me to own as well - about 15 9th graders who didn’t have a class, and as it turned out they all had IEPs – and I made the rest of the ends meet by subbing.

At the time, I was trying to polish up my resume, feeling anxious about trying for my first teaching assignment. I didn’t feel confident in my chances of getting hired; part of that was there are a lot of English teachers out there, and although I had some teaching experience of my own, I didn’t have much to really set me apart.

I was playing left field in our beer-league softball team, and someone hit it out to me. It landed wide, and on a whim I decided to try and dive for it. This wasn’t a fantastic plan for a variety of reasons, not least of which I’d never dived for a ball before. Clearly I did it wrong, and…

It wasn’t the worst injury in the world, but it left me pretty much knocked out of any interviews for teaching jobs. I applied to a few, but by the middle of June I was healed and still unemployed. Then, a friend I’d made in the teacher credential program - one of those people who everyone that meets them just falls in love with - told me there was a Special Education English teaching position open, and said they probably would hire me even without a SPED license.

Obviously, I took the job. And obviously, I kept with it because I’m now 18 years in. But I think the fact that I stumbled my way backwards into this world, and especially because I’ve taught students of such diverse learning styles and needs, my perspectives on teaching and learning are unique. To torture another metaphor: I’ve seen every part of the elephant, and I can confidently talk about what’s worked on every part of that elephant.

Ok, that metaphor fell apart. But I think you still get me :)