2004-01-09 - 2:32 p.m. - "the future is open wide"

I was asked personally by one of my administrators shortly before break if I’d attend a training session for this facilitator thing we’re starting at school. I told her to let me think about it and I’d get back to her in a day or two. This year I’ve stepped back from volunteering for stuff – I just feel too burned out. I pretty much am off all committees and am no longer the advisor of a couple of clubs I used to help run.

But there’s a second reason for backing away from everything this year. I had been thinking of leaving my present position and teaching overseas for a year or two. A couple of friends of mine have applied for the Fulbright teacher exchange program. The one thing I didn’t like about that is if you want to teach in Central or South America (which I’d like to so I can learn Spanish fluently), you have to already speak Spanish fluently. So that knocks out that option. But I know of two other people who got jobs overseas through ISS (International School Services), so I had been thinking about applying. There’s a conference in San Francisco at the end of Feb. and I have until 2/2 to complete my application and get it turned in.

I decided I’d better be up front with my administrator and tell her that I’d help out with the facilitator thing, but that there’s a chance I could be overseas next year if I got a job through ISS. When I told her, she was very encouraging and supportive. She said she’d run it by the principal, and let him decided if he still wanted me to be part of the training team. (The next day I got an email with info about the training, so I guess I’m on the team.)

Other than asking people about the ISS program, she was the first person to whom I had vocalized my plans about applying. It somehow seemed to make it so much more real.

When I left her office and walked down the empty hallway back to my classroom, I felt like a window to my future had just opened and that I had just made a critical decision that might determine my next couple of years. And it felt really good.

When I was back East, I told my family and friends of my plans. I figured if I told people, it would make me follow through with the application stuff – I don’t want to be known as a person of "all talk and no action". So sure enough, since I’ve returned from my break, I’ve done all the on-line portion of the applications other than the essays which I’ve been working on the past couple of days. The idea of it all is very exciting. I think the scariest part is dealing with the renting of my house and finding a property manager – that feels very daunting to me – even more so than the interviews at this point.

Then again, the program is extremely competitive, and given that I have no overseas work experience, I’m at a bit of a disadvantage. Nevertheless, I’m hopeful and excited about the process. Somewhere in my many boxes in the basement, I have a file entitled "the future is open wide" (a line from Modern English’s "Melt with You" song). It contains info about various overseas opportunities, and right now, I feel just that – "the future is open wide….hmm, hmm, hmm….hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm…."

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