"What do you do?" you often ask. It's a fair enough question, and one we Americans are fond of. The answer to that question, at least, is easy. I am a teacher. From there, though, it tends to get complicated. For the last five years, whenever I have confessed this, you have asked (you always do, you know), "Where do you teach?" The very next question you posed was always, "What subject?" Then I've had to admit that I have no official classroom or subject, but I've taught virtually anything anywhere. I have taught nursing at the McDonald's on 35th and Union Hills, Astronomy at the Starbucks on Stapley and Baseline and 100 other subjects in hundreds of other fast food restaurants and coffee shops besides. I have taught reading at the Cholla library, statistics at the Scottsdale Civic Center, and commercial truck driving at the Red Mountain Library. I have schleped my over-sized bag of text books to Phoenix College Library for Intermediate Algebra, Gateway Community College's Gecko Cafe for Machining, and a deserted classroom at Mesa Community College for Biology. I have home-schooled my daughters in between these many classes, driving from one client to the next, spouting spur-of-the-moment American History, Literature, and Geometry lectures as I speed down the I17, I10, or Loop 202.
Now, before you get too impressed, I'm no expert in any of these subjects. I've got a library of knowledge spilling out of the trunk of my car- a couple of milk crates overflowing with text books- and my best friend is Google. No, what I have really been is a translator. My native language is the written word and I'm fluent in explanation. There is great joy to be found in unlocking the puzzles found in text and simplifying and organizing them into consumable, understandable pieces. Teaching well is like cooking a feast for people, or singing them a song. Teaching well is laying your art at the feet of your students as an offering of love. It is a beautiful thing. Oh, and it has been beautiful these last five years, yes, but it has also been transient and hurried and harassed. Quite simply, my teaching has been homeless until this point and I've had no subject to claim as my own.
Until now. Nowadays, when you ask me where and what I teach, I have an answer. I am a GED instructor at Yavapai College. I am a teacher with a home.
