30 Day Blogging Challenge from Te@chThought: Day 29

In response to the recent challenge from te@chthought, I'm participating in a 30 day blogging mission, starting September 1st!

Day 29
How have you changed as an educator since you first started?

This is a great question!

With teaching, I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that there are a lot of "starts" - 

• I started teaching when I taught evening technical classes at an arts organization in Seattle.
• I started teaching when I began to substitute teach.
• I started teaching when I began to tutor in high school.
• I started teaching when my student teaching began.
• I started teaching when I was hired to teach middle school art.

All of these were different jobs, and they required some of the same skills, but the contexts were so different that each one has been its own universe of professional expectations and growth.

Navigating the teaching profession itself is a process, and it takes years to find one's place.

When I started, I was really focused on fitting in with my colleagues.  Do they know and accept me for who I am?

How comfortable am I in sharing who I really am?  Being a teacher is a weird thing.  In grad school they told us that one teacher got fired because she was tagged on facebook drinking a glass of red wine in a photo from her trip to France. 

What?

I know a few teachers who divide themselves between their school personae and their personal lives.  I did that for awhile when I was singing in a band.  Is this the real life?  Is this just fantasy?

I was caught in that landslide for years.  Perhaps it can be summed up by calling it a crisis of priorities.

I'm happy to be able to look back and say I've gotten past these questions.  The double life thing is exhausting.  I discovered a really comfortable place where I can be myself with my colleagues, my students, their parents, my parents, my friends, everybody.  I discovered that my career is more rewarding than the personal pursuits that were splitting me down the middle.  I still perform and record music, but now it all fits together nicely.

Will this process begin anew if I take another position at another school?  Or is this a rite of passage that teachers need only endure once in their career?

Any way the wind blows...