The Last PCs

The Last PCs

the story of a change in direction

I don’t really know how to say this.  I feel like I’m about to break up with you.  

I’m not going to be a teacher anymore.  

I feel like I’m a writer who’s just killed off a character.  Miss Neal will still be my name, but only on airplane tickets and wedding invitations.  I know you have objections.  But Miss Neal, why?  But Miss Neal, what are you going to do now?  But Miss Neal, I thought you loved teaching precious children?  But Miss Neal, I thought this was your dream? 

Let me tell you, reader, it is not flippantly that I lay this dream aside.  After all, I was the one who read Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie and Christy and thought - that’s what I want to be.  Little did I know that it was much more complicated than having a “heart for kids”, lots of energy and a college degree.  

Teaching is a weighty thing, and to call it “being a teacher” is like calling the tip the iceberg itself.  Calling it parenting, counseling, organizing, planning, event coordinating, inventing, administrating, and teaching and anything else they ask you to do would be more accurate.  Naturally, you’d agree and counter with “but lots of people do it”.  You’re right.  

So why can’t you do it?  

I wish the answer were as simple as a sentence, that I can’t handle the confinement of “the system” or that I decided to start an orphanage in South Africa or that I had a batch of demanding, unreasonable parents that spoiled everything.  I know you’ll have objections.  

Do you have a terrible set of parents or a bad school?

The parents I had this year were reasonable, kind, helpful people.  I love working with the people I get to work with.  The school is positive, creative, and so supportive of families.  That’s not it at all.

But you’re such a good teacher!

I think I may possibly be a good teacher, but I am most certainly not a good manager, and that, friends, is what matters first.  I don’t think I’m Type A enough.  My small group laughed when I told them that.  I don’t think I had an inkling of how rigid and organized a 3rd grade teacher has to be, or that I want to be that organized.  I thought that I could get away with making teaching easy because I’m smart and have more energy than a power plant.  I thought wrong.  

But the breaks are so nice!

Yes, they are.  They really are.  And by the time you get to them, you need them desperately.  I don’t know that I am wired to oscillate between running 200mph and 0mph.  I think maybe running 60 all year is going to be a better pace for me. 

But it’s such a ministry!

You’re absolutely right.  The only problem is, when your job is ministry and your Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night and Sunday are ministry, it can get a little overwhelming.  I’m not saying we ever ever turn our love for Jesus down or decide when we want to love other people, but there should be a balance between pouring out and resting.  In the teaching field, I feel like there are three options.  You can be a teacher who doesn’t pull 60 hour weeks and neglects her job (not really an option).  You can be an experienced efficiency wizard who manages to get it all done in a 40 hour week.  You can be an 60-70 hour a week die hard who wins awards for her after school homework clubs, house visits, and community projects.  I’m not meeting the middle criteria, and the two bookends aren’t options I’m willing to consider.

But everyone says it’s just a learning curve!

You’re right.  And I think if I stayed in it for another 5 years, I’d get my act together and my kids might be achieving the way they should be, but right now, they aren’t.  A good sized lot of them are in the bottom bracket of testing because I didn’t know how to push 26 eight year olds hard enough.  In another 5 years, I’ll be almost 30, and really, in 5 years, I want to be home with my own kids, not just barely getting the swing of teaching.  

So what are you going to do now?

Well.  I’m staying in the field, sort of.  Last week, I was offered a position at Pearson in their inside sales department selling curriculum to schools.  It’s an office job.  I’ll sit in a cube.  I’ll probably wear heels and a pencil skirt once in a while.  I’ll be able to use my people skills and classroom knowledge to help teachers use their curriculum better and equip them with tools to help their kids succeed.  I won’t be working 60 hour weeks.  I won’t be spending money on my job instead of making it.  I won’t feel like I’m failing my kids.

How are you going to still be involved with kids?

Here’s what I know.  I love kids.  So much.  That hasn’t changed.  If I could teach a class of 5 of my toughest, most disrespectful hooligans, I would.  I know that working with kids is something I’m wired to do.  I kind of have an internal kid radar.  Sometimes I prefer being with them to being with adults.  They don’t take themselves so seriously.  I have a few ideas about how to work with pcs, like coaching soccer, teaching dance, doing a co-op class in the evenings, or teaching Sunday school.  

The truth is, I don’t know.  I don’t know if this is a hiatus or a goodbye.  I don’t know if it’s quitting or just reevaluating what I’m good at.  I don’t know if it’s actually a quarter life crisis, or if it just happens to fall around my 25th birthday.  I can’t see it all laid out right now.  What I do know is I want to try this, and I think I can do it.  I think my best friend got it right when she said not to think of it as quitting something but trying something new.  And that’s what I’m going to do.  I don’t know what it will be like.  I don’t know if you’ll still think my stories are funny if they’re about the secret life of an office girl.  Only time will tell.

Thanks for listening and for understanding,

Little Miss Sunshine