Writing And Teaching Together
The Reality of Writing
The Reality of Teaching
Tag-Ins
Writing's Challenges
Conclusion
Introduction
Through Another cycle the moon has its way made,
and now through the end of a mire of thoughts we wade.
Yes, this is the entry for the waning of the moon - the second logical look at this lunar month's topic: going to teachers college.
A number of angles have been considered over the past few entries in the series, and it seems that the best one to really clasp onto is the thought that extra training really isn't the answer. After all, it's not for a lack of training that teaching is an option.
In fact, last week's entry definitely had a good point to make. Writing needs to be considered a serious option.
Writing and Teaching Together
Now, teaching and writing do go hand in hand like milk and cookies or butter and popcorn or a sharp cheddar and a fine red wine. But some cookies go better alone, some popcorn is best left naked, and sometimes the wine is all you need.
Yet, considering the fact that drained a PhD of its allure (aside from a sense that all the extra training would never get used) is that writing and teaching would need to be balanced, makes me doubtful of going to teachers college.
If teaching is what I want to get into, then there are colleges that will happily take an applicant with a master's degree. With plenty of freelance writing work packed for the duration, even a temporary college teaching gig would work. Or I could just hop back over the ocean for a spell.
However, what has made teachers college less appealing is the simple fact that it will not guarantee a job at its end. Though throughout the year-long course opportunities would be had and connections would be made. And I would learn how to teach - or at the least, pick up some useful hints. All the same, if all that's to be gotten out of teachers college is a few names to add to my network, and a few teaching tips, then it becomes little more than a year-long, several thousand dollar conference on education.
The Reality of Writing
Writing is the better choice. And, tempering my reasoning with some subjectivity, it's a lot more enjoyable. If the world ran on human laughter or feelings of elation, then writing would be all I'd need to do. But anything indie like that is something that's built up slowly.
Yet, writing's slow build figures into my broader philosophy entirely well. A small flame burning faithfully through the night and into the next day is better than a bonfire that needs to be constantly fueled then flags and dies only moments after you've run out of feed.
It may be excessive pride, it may be the foolishness of youth, or it might just be the rush that writing gives, but pursuing writing makes more sense to me. Teacher's college is stable, and kind of dull. It's like riding the bus somewhere in a city whereas writing is like walking. Slower, and perhaps less intensely peopled, but more rewarding in the end.
Writing might lack the stability of something like teaching, and the challenges might be more multiple in writing but that makes writing more rewarding. Nothing worth doing is ever easy.
The Reality of Teaching
As much as it seemed like a logical next step when I applied to teachers college last fall, I declared that teaching was my passion and calling after having my first good class in South Korea. In hindsight, it seems that the announcement was more likely the passion itself speaking rather than me.
Moreover, 20 teaching hours and 10 prep hours per week aren't really comparable to the sort of work that would be expected in Ontario - even for a high school teacher. While the teaching and prep hours might be the same (or less, or greater), I would be involved in more things than my Korean school's meetings in restaurants and such.
Of course, all of that sounds like the writhing of a man pinned down by an uncomfortable idea. Writhing caused by the feeling that, as I mentioned in last week's entry, I would be simply caving to the social pressure of being told that "teacher" is the default job for an English/History major.
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Time to tag in Blake.
William Blake may have a point with: "to be in a passion you good may do" (William Blake, Auguries of Innocence), but if that passion is cast on you like a cloak rather than put on by your own two hands is it necessarily proper to you?
Okay! Bring in Sartre!
And would Jean-Paul Sartre, a man who thought a lot about freedom, regard my choosing to go to teachers college (and therefore make myself mean "teacher" more formally) as a really a free choice, if it's not a meaning that I've made on my own, but rather a meaning that's been presented to me over and over again so that I'm open to it?
And bring it back to me!
But those last two paragraphs, quotes (*ahem* tag-ins) aside, are steeped in rhetoric and feeling and not necessarily deduced from anything.
Writing's Challenges
Without the Internet, it would be easy to say that teaching is stable work and writing is not. Of course, there are still thin months for writers, but having to weather a few thin months as opposed to a waiting period of up to five years for regular employment sounds like a better, more stable, deal.
Yet, throughout my life people have said, when asked about writing for a living, "don't do it" (Thomas King's exact answer to the question, given to me when I was a student in Guelph). But that just makes me want to dig in my heels and try harder.
Certainly it takes someone special to teach well, and someone special to really bring material alive for people, but it also takes someone special to write well, and to bring ideas and emotions alive with only ink and paper (or pixels on a screen).
Somehow dealing with words directly has more appeal to me, perhaps (despite the possibility of posting videos and audio clips online) because of a belief that more people can meaningfully understand words alone than can understand a man standing in front of a camera.
Further, those words on a page won't misdirect with potentially confusing gestures or intonations. A bit of reading experience and maybe a dictionary or thesaurus, and writing can be understood by most anyone, regardless of their learning style. Plus, it gives a more concrete reference point than an online video or audio clip.
Conclusion
Ultimately, I could teach, but I'd rather write. And as much as the two are compatible, I feel like I'm too single-minded and stubborn to mingle them together.
So, teacher's college, it could be some wild good times. And it could lead to a steady, solid career, but I don't see it necessarily leading to a maximally happy life. In fact, I think I'd be better off skipping teacher's college and just going out for college teaching or returning to South Korea. I feel fine about either of those combined with writing. They seem a better fit, and a stronger match.
I'll still wait for the replies from the teachers colleges to which I applied, but can't say with certainty that they'll be hearing much back from me.
Taking writing over formal teaching training may seem illogical, but I'm no robot and not all of my actions can be governed by logic alone. So I will write and write, and probably teach some on the side.
Let me know what you think about combining teaching and writing or the usefulness of teachers college in the comments. And feel free to follow my blog, I'll follow yours back.
The topic for the next four-parter is still being worked out. In the meantime check back here Wednesday and Friday. On Wednesday an article about the "Preppers" movement will go up, and on Friday a review of "Immortals" will be posted.
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