Prologue: How Do You Say "Avocado"? 1988-89

After a month or so of random substituting jobs - almost all of them at the high school I’d graduated from just four years prior - I got a wonderful opportunity. A teacher in the foreign language department was going to go out on leave for the rest of the school year - more than a semester left to go in the year - and they needed a long-term, stable sub (“interim sub” it was called). The substitute coordinator approached me about the possibility - was I interested? Um, YES!!! I’d enjoyed the subbing up to that point, but the idea of being “the teacher”… I’d be doing all the lesson planning, grading, for “my” classes and students, for the rest of the year… was so exciting. I’d also be making more money, which was a nice perk - interim subs are paid the same rate as a first year teacher, although they don’t receive benefits.

I met with the foreign language department chair, who wanted to assess my skill set and readiness. The teacher going out was primarily a French teacher… and I spoke no French… but they’d switched around some teaching assignments in the department, so that instead I’d get five sections all of Spanish I. Although I wasn’t fluent in Spanish, I’d studied it for six years in high school and college, and so I was pretty good. And this was Spanish I - Hola, como estas? Hablo-hablas-habla-hablamos-hablan - that kind of stuff. I knew I could do it.

And so, they gave me the chance.

I was floating on air. Now I had a my own gradebook, my own students, my own lesson planning book.

I was figuring it out as I went along - the curriculum, the lesson development, and the class management. It wasn’t great, by any means, but it was manageable. I was taking the education classes at night that I’d been lacking for permanent certification ever since dropping my education major in college. That was helping in real-time with crafting some lessons that had a chance at working.

I managed to stay at least one lesson ahead of the students, which was helpful for my confidence. My prior experience - and natural inclination toward - lots of planning-planning-planning meant that I overplanned the days, with more content than I’d ever actually fit in, in one 50 minute class. By default, that helped me with classroom management, because it kept the kids busy.

One of the things I hadn’t planned for - COULDN’T plan for, in fact - was that no matter how much planning you do, you can’t make a plan to manage the natural curiosity of human beings. Today, I thank GOD that most of the time we haven’t managed to kill the natural curiosity of kids - but that year, I admit, it posed a bit of a challenge. I’d be in the middle of a well-planned lesson teaching the conjugation of the verb “comer” (“to eat”) along with some well-placed nouns to be eaten, and up went the hand. “Yes, Kim?” “Ms. Johnson, how do you say ‘avocado’ in Spanish?”

“Avocado” was not in the lesson plan. “Avocado” was not any one of the twelve different tasty delight nouns that were either in the chapter or on my list of activities. And “avocado” was not a food I enjoyed at the time (though I greatly appreciate it now), and my non-Spanish-fluent self didn’t automatically know how to say “avocado” in Spanish.

To this day, I’ll never know what inspired my response. The Jeanette of the time was one who, when thrown a curveball she hadn’t planned for, would typically respond by doing her best approximation of an animal, frozen when caught in the act of doing something they shouldn’t be doing. The Jeanette of now, reassured by the confidence that comes with age that she doesn’t in fact have to know everything, would have admitted she didn’t know and would have invited some exploration to find out.

That day, unwilling to be the first Jeanette and not yet equipped to be the second Jeanette, I did what I think was the next best thing… I improvised.

“That is a FANTASTIC question, Kim, and I love your curiosity. I’ll tell you what… I will give FIVE extra credit points to every student who can come in tomorrow knowing how to say ‘avocado’ in Spanish.”

Reminder: this was in 1988… before there were computers in classrooms, or access to the internet, or googling.

That night, at home, there I was… frantically searching my English-to-Spanish dictionary… how the hell do you say "avocado” in Spanish?

(The answer, by the way, is most commonly either aguacate or palta, depending on the country in which you’re speaking of these delicious fruits).

I think back on that experience, and I realize that a lucky confluence of conditions helped to make it an experience that didn’t kick my butt, eat me up, and spit me back out. Because goodness knows I wasn’t actually well-prepared to be successful in the classroom. But several things worked in my favor:

1. I was teaching in a really good school, with (generally) really well-behaved kids. I had very few behavioral challenges to deal with… and which I’d have been VERY ill-equipped to handle, if I’d faced them.

2. Some of the students I knew personally - remember, this was the high school I’d graduated from four years prior, and since my younger sister was five years younger than I, some of these kids knew my sister as their friend. As a result, they went out of their way to be helpful and cooperative, even when I was flailing.

3. I had incredibly supportive colleagues. They wanted a JPT graduate to succeed. They also, none of them, wanted to teach Spanish I. :) So they helped me be successful- they loaned me lesson plans, tests & quizzes, and most of all … their insights.

4. Although I wasn’t fluent in Spanish, as an English major I was reasonably expert in the English language, grammar, etc. At the same time, though, my biggest “gift” with the English language was that I could take grammatical terms and, rather than focus on the terms themselves, I knew how to give concrete, helpful examples (ask me some day to explain to you how to know when to use “I” vs “me” in a “He gave the gift to Suzie and….” type of scenario, and I’ll teach you a trick you’ll never forget). That was enormously helpful in trying to help kids understand some of the basics of language construction in a language they didn’t know, when they often couldn’t understand those basics in their own native language. I saw kids get better at grammar not only in Spanish, but even in English

   … and that was not only gratifying and confidence-boosting, it was a huge jumping off point for my NEXT teaching experience.

It begins

I’ve thought about this for a long time. Writing. Toyed with writing a novel. Even wrote a few (bad, really bad) chapters. But what I’ve really thought about is just telling my story, especially my story as an educator, and all that I’ve learned on that journey. I don’t know if anyone would care. Don’t even know if anyone would read it. But I keep wanting to tell it. And every year, #NaNoWriMo beckons to me… just write something, it whispers. And then shouts. So here I am. Of course, NaNoWriMo would have me writing a novel. But (see previous note), I’m not sure that’s what I’m best at. But telling a real story, a true story, that I think I can do. I’m not convinced that anyone would pay to read it - and that’s not really my point, anyway. So I’m trying things out here, on this blog. On this website, the domain I bought several years ago, not really having a clue what it meant to do so. And I know nothing about website design. So for now, anyway, I’m just going to write, and see where it leads me.

I think it’s wise to start with why I became an educator. As a child, I was endlessly curious, to the point of irritation of those around me. “Why?” was my favorite word. Summer days were spent wandering EVERY aisle of the library, finding the books I wanted to take home that week (the rule was, we could check out as many as we could carry, and I was determined to have enough to get me through the week).

My mom tells a story of me as a very young child, and how I asked questions about everything. Once we were on a family vacation, staying in a motel. I had been mildly ill, with a fever, and I’d been given those children’s chewable aspirin that were so tasty (even now, more than fifty years later, I can remember the taste of those aspirin). It was the night before we were due to head home, and we were settled in for the night. My mom realized I wasn’t in the main room of the motel, and she found me in the bathroom, on the tile floor, eating from the bottle of aspirin. (This was, of course, long before the age of childproof caps). In a panic, my parents rushed me to a nearby hospital. The doctor examined me, took a look at the bottle, and determined I’d not eaten enough of them to be in any danger. My parents were relieved. And not just that I was going to be fine. The doctor told them, “She’ll probably just sleep more than usual on your drive home.” That was relief #2… that I might sleep instead of pestering them the entire drive home.

Nope. While my older sister Teri slept soundly in the back seat of the car, I stood up, leaning in between mom and dad in the front seat (this was, of course, long before seat belts in cars), and chattered away the entire drive home, asking my usual thousands of questions along the way.

Fortunately for me, school was a place where my curiosity blossomed, where I could explore anything that intrigued me, and where I could feel wildly successful (more on the dangers of that feeling, later). And teachers… well, teachers were my heroes. They represented both the wizards who had learned so much, and the guides who could help me learn, too.

So for as far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a teacher. My mom had been a high school English teacher, albeit briefly. Since she was my first hero, and my subsequent heroes were these magical people called teachers, it makes perfect sense that this was what I wanted to be, too. As a child, my favorite Christmas gift I think I ever received was a goody box of “teacher stuff”. A small chalkboard and chalk (this was, of course, long before the age of whiteboards); pens and pencils and erasers; classroom bulletin board decorations; and most magical of all… a GRADEBOOK. I was about ten when I got that gift, with a younger sister who was only five. Poor Denise… I made her sit through far too many basic lessons on the Spanish alphabet, complete with attendance and quizzes and grades. It was heaven… for me, anyway.

I held on to that dream of being a teacher, all through elementary school, and then middle school, and then into high school. I held on to that dream despite being made fun of by classmates for being “teacher’s pet” or “brainiac”… it helped that I had lots of other friends, friends I love to this day, who helped keep that teasing from feeling like bullying. I held on to that dream thanks to the support of two loving parents who just wanted me to be happy, whatever that meant for me. And I held on to that dream despite people - TEACHERS, no less - who literally told me, “You’re too smart to be a teacher. You should do something bigger with your life.”

I never understood that line of thinking … ESPECIALLY from teachers. First of all, way to insult yourself, eh, by telling someone they’re “too smart” to enter your line of work. WTH? Second, why would you ever knock down a child and their dreams like that, no matter what you thought of those dreams? And third and most of all… how could you not see that, as professions go, there aren’t many that rival the influence, the opportunity, the “bigger-ness” of being a teacher? How could you not see that the opportunity to help other people grow, to feed their curiosity, to help them find their answers to their own “Why?”, is one of the greatest gifts a person could receive? Two of my favorite quotes about teaching seem relevant here:

“Teaching is the greatest act of optimism” - Colleen Wilcox

“I touch the future. I teach.” - Christa McAuliffe

It always seemed to me that, aside from any children you might yourself raise, being someone’s teacher was a way to leave an impact on the future. It was a way to take the optimism you have that things can always get better, and contribute to that by helping others to learn and grow.

So, yeah, I always wanted to be a teacher.

I entered college, and began both my major (English, of course… both because I loved to read and because I wanted to be like my mom) and a minor in Education. I was going to be a high school English teacher, and nothing could deter me from my course.

Until the day I encountered the one argument, the only argument, that made my logical brain stop and pause.

“Maybe you only want to be a teacher because you’ve never considered doing anything else?”

That, my friends, was a kick in the gut, precisely because it unknowingly used against me the one thing I loved about myself more than anything else - my curiosity. Had I been so set on being a teacher that I’d stopped being curious about other possibilities? Had I closed off my mind too soon?

That was the day I stopped pursuing my minor in education. I still kept my major, but at that point I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with it. I just knew I needed to stay open, to stay curious, to what else might be out there. I took courses that seemed interesting (including, eventually, a minor in Sociology that fascinated me, broke me out of my shell of privilege I’d been born into, and shaped my world view forever); I took advantage of a program I was in to travel in the summer (perhaps later in this blog I’ll tell of my summer as a 19 year old living in London, or a 20 year old traveling in China); and I threw myself into our Student Union, the major non-Greek organization on campus. I planned and opened our campus coffee house; I helped to coordinate our spring festival and comedy tours. My role helping to book campus entertainment meant that I received many a demo tape from bands hoping to make the college circuit (this was, of course, long before the age of CDs). In what was a memorable-in-hindsight development there, one random mixtape that arrived was of a band whose music personally appealed to me, but who I knew would not be popular on Wake Forest’s campus. I gave the mixtape to my then-boyfriend, a guy who later became my (now-ex) husband. He loved it, too. Years later - many years later - we saw that band perform in Miami on New Year’s Eve. Ah, Guns n Roses.

But I digress.

And so I graduated from college, unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. Because I’d enjoyed the coffee house and the spring festivals and the concerts - and because I do love a good opportunity to organize anything - I decided to try my hand at event organizing. So I took a job at a local resort in their Events department, thinking this might be something I enjoyed.

I was miserable.

The people I worked with were nice, but the job was more about upselling menu items than about organizing an event. I was definitely out of my element.

So I quit, and decided to reevaluate. I took a night job at the local Burdines (any of my Florida peeps remember Burdines?), and contacted the high school I’d graduated from to see if they needed any substitutes.

They did.

I was lucky because the woman in charge of calling substitutes in remembered me as a student, and had always liked me. So I got called in to substitute for a science teacher.

I didn’t know the subject. The students were only moderately interested in the work the teacher had left for the day. Some of them even struggled to think of me as teacher material, because I was only 22 and my 17 year old sister Denise (she of the childhood Spanish lessons) was their classmate in that same school. I didn’t know exactly how to take attendance, or keep control, or help any of them with their chemistry formulas.

I was in heaven.

That was the day that I knew the classroom was where I belonged. I didn’t know exactly what I’d be doing, or how long I’d be doing it for, but there was something about being in that room, with students (barely younger than I) who looked to me for guidance, that reminded me of the power of learning. The potential. The curiosity. The magic.