Splashing Down

If you haven’t already, read my previous post for part 1 of this saga.

 

Some friends didn’t believe that I didn’t have a plan in mind when I left my job, but I really didn’t. I spent most of last fall consumed with research: attending information sessions, talking to people about their careers and passions, and spending more time on Google than anyone can consider healthy. Within about two months I was thinking seriously about teaching. When I was younger I’d always planned on teaching.  And I’ve loved the times I’ve conducted training in the corporate world. I began volunteering as an SAT tutor, and my time in the classroom was just as fulfilling as I had imagined.

 

I visited every grad school in Manhattan and started pulling transcripts together. Then a dear friend recommended I look into New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF), an alternative certification program. It was a perfect fit. In the summer I would begin training, complete my student teaching, and enroll in a (generously subsidized) master’s program. In September I would be teaching in my very own classroom.

 

The application process was more intense than getting into college but, at the beginning of this year, I was accepted to become a secondary math teacher. But the closer it got to the beginning of training, the less sure I became that this was the right path for me. Corporate training and tutoring were great, but those students wanted to be there. And they already had their basic needs met. Neither of those things would always be the case for the students I would encounter in a high-needs NYC classroom. It just didn’t feel the way I wanted or expected it to. And so, two weeks before training was scheduled to start, I dropped out.