Katie's Future

Whew! Thanksgiving break is here at last! This morning I got up, sat around, knit, watched some youtube videos, knit some more, made a delicious lunch for myself, and knit some more. It's wonderful to just sit around and do nothing! A full day of that is enough though, tomorrow I'll do something productive.

So I've been pondering my future plans a lot lately, and it's probably time I told you about that.
This quarter I have been working 4 days/week at Avanti High School, which is a small alternative high school in Olympia. I work primarily in a math classroom as a tutor/support person. I'm also taking a 4 credit class called Toward Becoming a Teacher, which is blowing my mind. Both these experiences have helped me to start thinking about my goals for teaching and my philosophies about education.

Avanti is a really interesting place, and it reminds me of Options in a lot of ways. For example, the atmosphere is really unstructured and relaxed (in the math classroom at least, other classes are much more teacher led) and the kids go at their own pace based on learning plans that they create. I really like a lot of what I see happening there, and can see myself having a rewarding career teaching somewhere with that kind of progressive model.

On the other hand, the teacher for my 4 credit class, Lester, is really challenging my ideas about teaching. He is one of the most thoughtful, experienced, progressive, and successful teachers I have ever known. He also taught in a giant public high school for 30 something years. To me, these are kind of contradictory statements about a person, just because I was under the false impression that progressive ideas and teachers can't survive in traditional high schools. Lester believes that it is absolutely possible to teach progressively in even the most mainstream traditional schools, and this belief is rubbing off on me. His whole class is about giving us strategies as teachers for doing this, and it is all very inspiring and makes us want to go change the world one teacher at a time. Yay for passion.

I love learning all these strategies tricks and teaching philosophies at the same time that I am actually working and teaching kids in high school. It's a perfect opportunity to test out these ideas for myself and figure out how to apply them while they are fresh in my head. It's also forcing me to re-think my own teaching methods, which I am realizing need a lot of fine tuning.

My current plan is something like: one or two more years getting a BA and maybe a BS, and then probably doing the Masters in Teaching (M.I.T) program at Evergreen since Olympia is awesome and our house is awesome. Then I'd love to take a travel break and go have some amazing adventures, and then teach math or science in a mainstream high school. I see myself eventually ending up teaching in an environment that is closer to the kind of schools I love, alternative high schools, or maybe elementary school. But it's becoming clear to me that the schools that need good teachers the most are public high schools. Good education shouldn't only be accessible to kids whose parents can pay for private school or care enough about their education to send them to an alternative school, I think there needs to be more passionate and caring educators in the mainstream public system, because everyone has the same right to a good education. I also think that I need to become really familiar with the public school system, get to know it really well, before I can understand how to change it.

So that's the plan Stan. But I never like to have too concrete of a plan and I am open to whatever opportunities might come my way. It's still good to have a sense of direction though. (No jokes about my literal sense of direction please...)

I am salivating just thinking about Thanksgiving. We are having a friend thanksgiving this year instead of a family thanksgiving (but friends are family!) and I can't wait. I love to eat.

Oh! I also am making good progress on my marathon training! Last week I ran the furthest and longest I have so far, 4 miles!! For 1 hour! (yes, I know that is 15 min/mile, it's not about speed, it's about distance) I'm so impressed with my legs, I don't know how they do it. It's amazing how you if you can run 2 miles you can run 3, and if you can run 3 you can run 4... and you just keep on going! Whew! I love it. So that's awesome. And I feel great. Somebody should have told me about this whole exercise idea earlier.

Well it's time for bed. The animals in this family have no respect for my room. It smells like cat pee and dog. Is my cat mad at me for leaving her? Is that why she likes to pee in my room? Gross. Guess I'd better go brave it.

Goodnight!