Teachbad: Origins: Part One
The Crosby S. Noyes Elementary School is three blocks from my house. After teaching there for one day, I knew it would be impossible for my wife and I to send our kids to their neighborhood public school. This was a huge disappointment, but non-negotiable.
I started teaching at Noyes (pronounced noise)[1] in November 2004 after a lengthy and poorly planned stretch of unemployment. It was planned in that I had planned to stop going to my job, and I correctly assumed they would stop paying me. The plan was not well thought out in that I had no other job lined up, interviews, leads, etc. All I really had were vague ideas about the kinds of jobs I might like and a very thin Rolodex.
I was trying to execute an under-resourced total career field switch just as the labor market was goingtohell.com. Furthermore, I was doing so in a town crammed with hyper-competitive, over educated young professionals, most with more impressive pedigrees and credentials than my own. I had overshot, under-planned and found myself highly uncompetitive in the Washington, DC labor market. This truth would reveal itself in countless uncomfortable ways over the next 20 months.
During this very dark time, my wife and I would intermittently talk about me becoming a teacher. Mostly my wife would talk about me becoming a teacher. I considered teaching with the same level of seriousness I considered becoming a scuba instructor or cheese making as possible new career paths. It was partly because I hated the sound of it. Hi!I’m a teacher! Too common, maybe. Not commanding of respect. I didn’t go to graduate school and move 3000 miles