When I was little, one of my favorite games to play was teacher. I can remember coming home after school, taking my little cousin Jamie, who stayed with my mother during the day, and would sit her down in front of my little toy chalkboard so I could teach her the lessons I had learned that day. If Jamie wasn’t there I would take my stuffed animals and line the up in rows, creating a class out of giraffes, pirates, dolphins, and a purple lamb (who was actually a little problem child. I had to give him detention twice!). Aside from reading, playing teacher was one of the few things I enjoyed enough to do repeatedly.
One day, when I was in the third grade, my teacher Miss. Medlin gave me a copy of an old lesson plan on the month of October and Halloween. “Do you want this?” she said, “I don’t need it anymore.”
I carried it home as if it were some holy text, running my fingers fondly over the cover picture-three witched dancing around a cauldron. At home, I dropped my backpack on the floor and climbed up onto my bed, where I read the book over and over again. On each page was a master copy of some activity or picture to color, and the opposite page contained reading on the importance of the activity and suggestions that a teacher might incorporate into her lesson (the pronoun for teacher was always her in the book, and many others I’ve read on teaching. That aggravated me then, as it does now!). As I read the book, I imagined teaching the lessons to a class, going over again and again what I would say, how I would present the material differently to kids who hadn’t understood the first time, what I might do to get the students excited about learning. The whole time my body was absolutely tingling with excitement. For the first time in my life, teaching wasn’t just a game for me-it was something I could imagine doing for real. I went to bed that night with the intense (and foolish) desire to wake up the morning fully grown, so that I might start teaching as soon as possible.
However…middle school hit. In the sea of adolescence, awkwardness, and raging hormones, I lost my desire to be a teacher. What became increasingly important was wearing the right clothes (I never did; somehow I don’t think hoodys were ever a trendy style), styling my hair the right way (I was going for the jelled, yet spiky-in-the-front style that Collin Feral and other movie stars had. Though my seventh grade pictures shows me sporting more of a hard-as-concrete, duckbill-out-of-the-forehead atrocity that doesn’t look good on anyone), and, above all, I desired fitting in with the popular kids (of which I never had a chance in hell).
My middle school years weren’t a complete waste of time. It was during the eight grade that I discovered writing, and knew I wanted to be a bestselling novelist, writing books that captivated millions around the world and putting J.K. Rowling‘s book sales to shame. Writing is more than a job-it’s a calling. And telling people you want to be a writer is a very scary thing. It’s almost like giving them a piece of your soul. I learned that very quickly in those early years, and when people asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I would mostly fall back on my old dream and say, “I want to be a teacher.” This to me was at least halfway true, so it wasn’t a lie, and it got me off the hook of bearing my soul, but it was only a cover up. Teaching was a thing of the past.
Or so I thought.
During my freshman year of high school my English teacher, Mrs. Mathis, assigned each student to do a presentation on a short story. Mine was The Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury ( I could go on and on about how much I hate Ray Bradbury. No one who throws words so hap hazardously on the page should be considered a writer. The man does with words what a toddler does with finger-paint. But I’ll resist the temptation to digress). I worked hard on my presentation, creating a posterboard that outlined the story and defined several key words. When I presented it, I was a nervous wreck. My voice was squeaking so badly I wondered if anyone had even understood me. I finished, and wanted nothing more to sink into the floor and get away from the eyes locked onto me.
“Very good,” Mrs. Mathis said. Then her voice became serious and she said, “Cody, have you thought about what you want to do when you grow up?”
Oh, god! I though. There’s no way I’m telling my entire ninth grade English class that I want to be a writer. I quickly regurgitated my automatic response: “I want to be a teacher.”
Mrs. Mathis’s faces beamed with excitement, and she actually exhaled. “Oh, good. Cody, I am so glad you said that, because that’s exactly what you need to be. Watching you…you just have that something about you that makes a good teacher. You‘re going to be really good at it.”
My face turned red as the students stared at me. Mrs. Mathis smiled at me once more, then told me to take my seat.
I didn’t pay attention to any of the other presentations, because I was too busy reliving the previous moment in my head. Mrs. Mathis had rekindled the flame I had felt all those many years ago as I read the lesson plan book. Once again, I wanted to be a teacher! However, this time it was different. Unlike the child who saw only the idealistic good things about teaching, I had now realized that teaching was going to be a hard job. I would be spending my days in front of high schoolers (for what else would a bookworm such as myself teach but Highschool English), and not all of them were going to be pleasant to teach. I fully understood the reality of teaching…and I still wanted to do it. And now I felt that God had called me to teach. I left class that day, wishing again that I could grow up over night and wake up the next morning as a teacher.
But there were more obstacles to overcome. Around the eleventh grade, something had happened to me spiritually. In wrestling with several issues, mainly my homosexuality and various things that had happened to friends, I fell into a period of atheism. I wanted to believe in God, but couldn’t feel him anymore. Furthermore, the church’s unloving stance on gays had made me feel that if there was a God, then he didn’t love me, and I was destined for hell. I don’t think any of my friends knew I was going through this; I tried my best to hide it well. But inside I was crumbling. I could see no grand plan for anything in our universe, so I stopped seeing the importance of anything I did. Why should I do anything that was uncomfortable?
Why should I decide to take on the horrible job of teaching? I decided I would focus on my writing instead. Writing was hard, but it didn’t require me to face fears like speaking in public or search for a moral center so I could be a good role model for my students. If I worked hard, I reasoned, I could write a book around the time I graduated, and, since I was going to be an amazing, best selling writer, it would earn me a ton of money, and I wouldn’t have to worry about college or finding a job. I would just keep writing, and live in a castle that my money had bought, and everything would be all right.
Oh, the dumb reasoning of a seventeen year old!
I spent the rest of the year writing, and though my work did improve in quality, none of it was publishable let alone amazing. Senior year rolled around and I had planned to take a concurrent enrollment class at the local community college. However, when I went to register for my classes, I discovered that I had missed the deadline for the required placement test and would have to find another first period. I scanned the list, and found only one class that I thought would be interesting: Teacher Cadet. I knew some kids that were taking the class; at least I’d have people to talk to. So I signed up for a semester of teacher training-something I knew I was never going to need!
All throughout the class I wrestled with my conscience. I felt God telling me that I was suppose to be a teacher, and that I needed to fulfill this calling, then one the other had I didn’t believe in God, nor did I care what he said. If there was no meaning in the universe then I wasn’t going to spend it in a boring classroom, doing a job that terrified me. I would spend it writing, and earning millions of dollars from my novels’ movie rights.
Looking back, I wish I had given into God instead of trying to do it my way. My life might be a lot more easer today, in so many ways, if I had. But I was dead set on not becoming a teacher. So dead set that when Mrs. Vaughn pulled me out to the hall and told me I had one week to apply for Teaching Fellows, and that she wanted to know if I would be interested, I paused. Here it was, the path laid out before me, the choice to make. Do I say yes, give into God, and become a teacher, or do I turn down the scholarship and write and, if need be, find a job that doesn’t require public speaking?
I said no.
When I did, I entered into a period of spiritual darkness. I’ve always believed that God speaks to me in an intuitive way, through a special feeling I have. And, when I disobeyed him and turned away from teaching, I felt as if my insides were being squeezed. Every pour in my body screamed for me to stop doing what I was doing and give into God, but I didn’t listen.
After Highschool I enrolled in the local community college and began taking classes, all the while researching different careers I might be interested in: Physical therapist, occupational therapist, Librarian, and several others. But none of them satisfied the screaming in my body like teaching. I liked thinking about going into one of these careers, because there was little or no public speaking involved. But every time I imagined living out my life in one of these roles my soul only felt more suffocated. My body only screamed more.
Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore. I broke down and decided I would be a teacher. But, I vowed, I will only teach until I could support myself with my writing. Then I would quit forever. I told some of my friends, who were also going into the teaching field, and they greeted my decision with congradulations. However, I don’t think my heart was ever in this decision. I only did it to appease my conscience, and in the back if my head I was still searching for another career I could go into that would be easer. I was still trying to find a loophole so I could do it my way.
I finally gave in several weeks ago, when, after a long time away from God, I finally returned to him. I gave up every part of my life and told him to take me and do with me what he wished. I stopped running from teaching and turned towards it, vowing to make it my vocation, if that’s what the Lord wanted. Instantly the spiritual suffocation was lifted from my body. The desire to teach was returned to me, stronger than ever. The job is still a scary one, but now I believe that God is going to help me through the touch parts, and everything will be alright. I even turned my writing over to God also, and he took away the need to be a bestselling writer. I no longer see writing as a means to get paid, but a way to create art and to praise him. Both writing and teaching are my callings. I have no idea why I have two, but for some reason I do, and God makes them work.
So that’s my journey with teaching so far. I’ve went through a lot of ups and downs with career, but at the end of the day I’m just a little boy with a toy blackboard who wants desparately to stand in front of a classroom and teach his heart out. I’ve not always embraced this part of myself, but deep inside me has always existed the desire to teach, a desire that nothing-not even writing-could quench. I pray that everyone has a desire like this, and that they go after it with their whole heart. No matter what career it is: teaching, doctor, librarian, band director, race car driver, actor…or even something in seminary. I hope people recognize their calling and don’t turn way from it like I did. For realizing our callings, and working to fulfill them is, I believe, how we can start to work to bring God’s kingdom to earth.
