Following Your Life Path

We learn to live consciously through becoming aware of inner and outer events as they are happening. Building a conscious self means becoming increasingly aware of inner events, bodily events and interpersonal events. A conscious self is able to experience in full awareness all the distinctly different components of the self, including feelings, needs, drives and values. A conscious self lives consciously.
~ Gershen Kaufman/Lev Raphael, The Dynamics of Power

In my journaling book, the one on using journal writing as a spiritual quest, I was asked to write about my life path. What do I know about where I am coming from and where I am going?

What a question to ask someone in the middle of all the life turmoil that I am experiencing. I’m not sure I can even bring myself to answer those questions, let alone do it objectively, without whining or feeling sorry for myself.

On the other hand, I had too many errands to run and not enough time this afternoon to finish them, so I find myself with a fuller day tomorrow than expected, and an emptier day today than expected, in order to not waste too much gas driving to the same town twice in two days. So I might as well try.

My life path has certainly taken some unexpected twists and turns, lately. Yesterday the mail brought my PRAXIS exam scores. You could have knocked me over with a feather, as I anxiously stood at the mailbox, ripping open the envelope and frantically scanning the results. The scores were important – without passing scores, I can’t get approval from the state to teach in New Jersey. I was pretty sure I had passed the Elementary level basic knowledge exam. I was also quite certain I’d not passed the Middle School Social Studies test. It was a stunning surprise to find that not only had I passed both tests, I’d done exceedingly well on both of them.

That was a good twist in my path, another good twist, one that’s brought me even further out into a bright sunlit path full of trust that the future will be better, along with the last minute twist of funding for school. I think my life these past few months might be a testimony to never giving up in despair, that a window will finally open somewhere, even after you think that every last door, every last window, every last chink in the wall has slammed shut for you.

I have been pleasantly surprised by my MAT courses, too. I was afraid that I would be enduring many of them, putting in time and work playing to a party line that would make me acceptable to the state, but not trusting that educational theory would have caught up to practical application at university level coursework. Silly me, I forgot that out of academia come many of our brilliant discoveries. It’s been a truly gratifying experience to hear a professor explain that pop quizzes really aren’t a good way to assess a student’s grasp of subject matter. It’s been even more amazing to hear a teacher explain that she still calls each parent of her kindergarten students every week, to touch base with the parents and let them know how their children are doing in school.

I was a bit envious at that piece of information. My own children’s teachers were quite lacking in that effort last year, never asking us to volunteer in class, and getting only four formal progress reports and very little or no feedback in between. To be fair, it was really only one teacher who never communicated. One was very good at sending home notes each week, and another good at giving me in person updates on progress.

I find myself making mental notes about ideas that sound good to me. Ideas like calling my parents each week. I’m thinking that I might need to start a teacher’s book of good ideas, because I may not remember all these little hints and ideas next year when I start teaching for real.

My goal has suddenly been thrust into a much more viable possibility. I am in school, learning how to be a teacher. I am getting back test scores that indicate I might be quite good at my job. I already know that I have the communication skills to succeed, from previous work and volunteer experience. Now I’m building up the paper qualifications.<

My path is clearer and brighter. I can see ahead to a future that I might actually enjoy. There are people out there bucking the federal (ridiculous) requirements of NCLB, doing the kind of work that I dream teachers should do. Maybe I’ll be able to be that kind of inspiring teacher, too.