Pursuit of Happiness

       

I am finally choosing to start a blog again. I attempted this one other time 2 years ago, when I was finishing up a grueling grad school experience. I was full of anger and self pity and the content was a downer. This time around, I want to be positive, to find a silver lining to every experience. There are so many coincidences and the touch of god if you will, in my day to day life experiences. Even today, as I was pumped up and ready to write, the radio was playing " Take the Long Way Home, " a song that had significant place in my life as  it cruelly came on the radio many times on my lonely ride back home from my first half of freshman year of college. I had to leave school because I was pregnant with my first child. But even that experience had a silver lining. My daughter literally saved my life more than once without ever even realizing it. 

Writing a blog  is a huge step since I am not a well spoken, articulate writer ( ADD, skips the details and scatter brain are descriptions that come to mind)  and in my Special Education  student teaching evaluation it was said that I had a "cursory command of the English vocabulary." I was denied my certification.  So, English or Special Ed teacher I will never be, but a "sublime" Sub is what I ended up as. 

Why "sublime'? Well, I needed a catchy, cute title and........

Here is the definition I found, and I think, fits the bill:

impressing the mind with a sense of grandeur or power; inspiring awe,veneration, etc.:

Switzerland has sublime scenery.

supreme or outstanding:

a sublime dinner.

SO...HERE WE GO!

For the past three years, I have been subbing K-12 in every subject. I have my favorite schools I choose, or they choose me, to work for. Part of the reason is location, but a huge part is that the students and teachers recommend me as a "superb" sub who can get along with just about any student, especially the troubled ones.  I get great pleasure, most of the time, teaching, inspiring awe, and impressing their minds with a sense of power or grandeur. I like them to believe they are smart, capable, able to achieve success when others see them as failures, which leads me to reflect on my first day back this year, and my first blog post as a substitute teacher.  Hemingway said " write drunk and edit sober." No, I hope to write this  as soon as I get home, when I am full of the emotion and elation I get after that particular "aha" moment or,  as sometimes the case,  after a particularly difficult, draining, defeating day.

Today my reflection is about the pursuit of happiness. My assignment was as a sixth grade special education teacher, co-teaching with the language arts classroom teacher at Cherry Hill Middle School.  

The lesson plan objective  was to have the students create a mission statement. They were to write, on sticky notes, their goals for 6th grade, what they need to do to achieve them, and finally, as a class  put these all together to create a "mission statement" for the year. 

The teacher, Mrs Stauffer, played clips of the Will Smith film, "The Pursuit of Happyness" to help prompt them to think about why it is important to have a dream and a goal,  and in the process of that goal, to realize there will be setbacks, and to never let anyone convince you it cannot be achieved. The theme of achieving a goal  included  many failures, never giving up, having confidence, taking chances, and seizing opportunities when they are in front of you. 

In case you are not familiar with "The Pursuit of Happyness" a quick synopsis: A Dad and his son are homeless, as the Dad does not make enough money in his sales job. They go from shelter to shelter and sometimes are left out to fend for themselves. Determined to make a living for his family, he takes a chance and asks a high level stock broker who has just left his Ferrari, " What do you do and HOW do you do it?" " Be good with numbers and people" is the brokers reply.( Dad happens to be ex military and  is good at both.) And later in a cab with a Brokerage boss who is trying to solve a Rubik's cube but cannot,  Dad sees the opportunity to impress and solves it for him.  Very impressed indeed, Dad  is offered an internship to learn the stock trade. So, wearing the same suit daily he goes to work at day, back to the shelter at night,  and in the end, is offered a full time paying position. The look on his face is priceless and extremely emotional as the tears are welling up in his eyes. The bosses have no idea he is homeless or any of his background. They have no idea what is story is. They have no idea the miracle they have provided him. 

I was moved to tears during  this last scene. Something so familiar was stirring deep inside me and rose to the surface: Working so hard to achieve a dream and a goal has been my life journey. I alone, took chances out  of necessity to survive either physically or mentally,  and tried just about every occupation out there, from dental assistant to fast food worker, to housekeeping worker, to film production assistant, actor, census taker, teaching assistant, ice skating coach and choreographer, skating school program director, prison counselor, rape crisis/domestic violence social worker, retail sales, video production assistant, theater and rock concert stagehand, waitress, bus girl, office worker, the list goes on. Some jobs lasted three days, others 3 years. But never more than three years at one job. One major film producer called me a "renaissance woman" ( first time I ever heard that term...damn that cursory command of the language....) because I was willing and able to work in any department that needed me, from picture car coordinator to special effects. 

Having been hit with so many setbacks and failures and loss of jobs has at times completely killed my spirit and sent me into deep depressions. I have been left wondering, more than a few times, what is my purpose in this world? What will make me happy? Why am I so "different" and not successful in my career choices? What am I doing WRONG all the time? I am 54 and I STILL don't know what I want to be when I grow up........

I volunteered to Ms Stauffer that this was such a emotional lesson that moved me to tears. Still choked up after class was dismissed,  I told her one of my many challenging chapters...this one of  my  experience as a single mother juggling full time college load and 5 part time jobs. I had been looking for THREE YEARS...here we go again....to find a permanent place to live with my two daughters. Up until that time, they were living mostly with their father, who had a decent house and a full time job while I moved from place to place having to share with housemates because that is all I could afford. I finally found a place I could afford by myself, as I was driving down the road sobbing and begging God to please give me a break and show me a sign. Well I got one, literally. A "for rent" sign for an apartment above a garage, where, I did not need a background check, a credit check or a huge deposit. My child support would cover the rent, and student aid money as well as my five jobs would cover the rest. I was HAPPY! We lived there for.....you guessed it....three years. I then told Ms Stauffer that I still am not sure what I am supposed to be, that maybe this is it...this is it, a Substitute teacher. 

But back to today.....As I was leaving the school, I stopped in the office  to sign out when the secretary asked me if I would like to work at this school as much as possible.  All the regular subs have found full time work and they would like the same subs all year to keep familiarity and continuity for the students and staff. If I check the job available site  daily, I might end up working there daily! I like to think that the school thinks highly of me, the kids love having me ( at more than one school, when I walked in the classroom, a student would shout "YESS my favorite sub!") and that is the reason this school wants me as a "regular".  This made me very HAPPY!

So perhaps my pursuit of happiness in the career world is finally over. Maybe this IS the place I am destined to be. Maybe all my attempts, failures, experiences, have lead me to this one place. (You can't' beat the hours and the ability to work when you WANT to.) I have a different experience every day, ( fabulous for an quick to get bored ADDer) different students, different chances to awe and inspire an otherwise disinterested, dyslexic,  depressed  or defeated student............hmmm who does this remind me of?
Wow, I really have come full circle.