“But it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
-Alice

I never wanted to be a teacher. My parents were both teachers, and their lives seemed dull, repetitious and horribly, horribly safe.  In fact, I never really wanted  a “career” at all, because committing to something meant ruling out everything else.

I suppose I ended up with a career anyway — or maybe it’s more accurate to say I ended up with a work history, a path that led from one thing to another in a way that sort of made sense without adding up to anything you could call a career path. It zigged and zagged. The only through-line has been writing, although there is an inverse relationship between the amount of writing any given job entailed and the compensation I received for that job.

For my last essay at ITTO, my TEFL certification school here in Guadalajara, I had to reflect on “Lessons from the  Classroom”: how I assess my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher, what kind of teaching methodology I will employ in the classroom, and what my professional growth goals are. As I thought about that last topic, it occurred to me that, at this point in time, teaching English as a foreign language seems like the culmination of a lifetime of personal and work experiences. In one way or another, it draws on just about everything I’ve done:

• Latin. All that grammar. I am eternally grateful for my rigorous Ranney School education.
• Instructional design, obviously.
• One-on-one mentoring. I’ve seen the difference a caring adult, no matter how flawed, can make in a person’s life.
• Project management. Successful execution stems from comprehensive planning. Always have a back-up plan or two. Important lessons in any endeavor.
• Certainly, marketing. It’s my job to convince students that they need to master the lesson at hand because they need to learn English, not because I believe that America is culturally superior in any way, but because the ability to speak English is their ticket to the Mexican middle class, which is a life-changer for them and their families. Just as importantly, I’m also selling them on the belief that they can do it.

And then there’s my lifelong wanderlust, and the opportunity to experience life abroad not as a tourist but as a participant.

It just makes sense.