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July 2007: Life Among the Educators
Over the 4th of July weekend, starting with the picnic in Black’s Store basement July 1, and including July 4 itself, we had a visit with our oldest daughter Melinda (Mindy) and her husband Myron plus 13 year old daughter Linley. Melinda was full of enthusiasm because she has just finished her student teaching and has become a full fledged teacher at age 49. It is ironic that our three oldest children, the offspring of a pair of school teachers, rejected the idea of being teachers until recently. Mindy is a teacher now, Marc is working on his Master’s degree which will also qualify him to teach, and the 3rd offspring, Martha has already become a teacher, teaching music in New York City for the last 3 years. Very successfully I might add. She recently received a glowing letter of commendation from her Principal.
She was the first to change her mind about her profession. She had been working in Chicago for the Sony Music Corporation, enjoying a good position in the business. She got married. Her husband began being very successful in his job selling computer systems. They were making a lot of money and giving huge amounts of it to the government. They went to a financial consultant. His advice was short and to the point. He pointed at Martha and said “first, you quit your job. Second, buy a house.” They followed his advice, Martha quit and they bought a nice house in Lombard. Unfortunately, the marriage broke up. Martha couldn’t get her job back and resorted to temp work to get by. It was thirty five dollar an hour temp work but she had no benefits and she also developed some physical problems that were costly. I admire her for her next move. She said: “I always wanted to teach music” and proceeded to research how to do it. She found a program by the New York City public school system, where she could get a job teaching music and at the same time pursue a MS in Music and a teaching certificate in New York City through Queen’s College, over a two year period. She was appointed to a job in a Magnet School in Queens specializing in Fine Arts. She took the job in this elementary school and called us to say how lucky she was to get a job where they had 5 music teachers. Most of the other people in the program were in schools where there was one music teacher or in a few cases, none at all. I said to her: “Luck had nothing to do with it. They looked at your resume!” In any case, she loves her job, is very successful at it and the frosting on the cake is she found a really nice guy to marry.
Marc got his undergraduate degree in theater and has spent over 20 years in the acting game. He has had considerable success and has come within an eye-lash of making it big. He had a run off Broadway in New York with Scott Glenn and Amanda Plummer as cast members. Also, has been over seas in Scotland and later, London in a West End theater. Actors have an image of being highly paid. A few of them are, but the majority are like Marc, who has to drive a cab in Chicago to get by. It took a while, but he finally got tired of it and now is working on a Master’s degree which will qualify him to be a teacher. I think he’ll be a superb teacher with his acting background.
It’s interesting that our kids landed here. Jane and I each taught for over 30 years and both of us enjoyed it a lot. For me it was never really work—I was having too much fun. Also, the people you associated with resulted in numerous lifelong friendships. So to our kids we say: welcome to the teaching business. You’ll like it, I loved it.