so for about 6 weeks i was in the process, and have finally been accepted as a teaching fellow for big tree learning. their site’s not live yet, but i feel the need to link to it. anyway.
big tree is . . . “located in San Francisco and funded by Silicon Valley venture capital, our world-class team of educators, business leaders, and tech gurus are building innovative new learning tools that provide high school students with the inspiration and skills they need to succeed in school, college, and life.”
essentially, the company has gone out and recruited “rock star teachers” to create short, high-quality, interactive videos online to assist high school kids in different subjects. yours truly will be teacher of SAT writing. next week, they are flying me out to california for a three-day orientation. i’ll then have a month to work on my material on my own at home, and then at the end of july, i’ll fly back out for a week in the studio working on production.
i feel psyched for what seems like an amazing opportunity. i adore teaching, but feel limited sometimes. my personality is one that wants to go-go-go and do-do-do, and in education there’s not necessarily that ladder to climb. it’s always frustrated me that the shittiest teacher makes as much money as the most inspirational, and that years spent teaching are 1) universally accepted as an indicator of quality 2) the method towards financial gain.
so having a creative, innovative, financially-fruitful opportunity like this within my field feels like something that fell directly down from heaven. in truth, it came from carter, who is friends with shawna mitchell, one of the big tree folks (who, interestingly but entirely non sequitur-ily, was on survivor). carter was wonderful enough to think of me when she heard about shawna’s new company, and six weeks, an application, interviews, video conferences, and a million e-mails later, here i am.
it was a huge boost to be asked to participate this program, followed very closely by an even bigger backslide into self-doubt. what makes me think i am anyone’s version of a rock star teacher, that people would actually pay money to watch videos in which i presuppose to think i can help them be better writers and more successful test-takers? the thought of being professionally shot in a studio has me obsessing about everything from my weight (completely non-optimal again) to my nail-biting habit (also not optimal). i need to get over all of that. in, um, like, 5 weeks.
weirdly, for the first time in my life i am contemplating the notion of “branding” – something i had never had any cause to apply to myself. this week i had to complete a pretty length set of self-descriptions that big tree will use in part to build our public profiles on their website. i was asked everything from my favorite high school memory (jumping off stage at graduation) to funny things that have happened to me when teaching (missing my stool and landing on my ass in front of my first class seniors / sending home progress reports with grades for “SHIT PERFORMANCES” instead of “SKIT”).
when i got to some of the less black and white queries, like my personal theme song or a historical figure i relate to, i went absolutely bananas. for those i didn’t have an easy gut instinct reaction to, i spent literally hours trying to figure out what different responses might lead people/kids/anyone/everyone to think of me. how would you judge someone who name checks jem as the TV/movie personality she most identifies with? what do you think of someone who thinks the animal they are most like is a monkey, or who got into teaching because for the most part, she hated her own high school experience intensely? what kind of message would picking kanye over the doors or the killers say about me if you didn’t know me? is it weird to pick jim morrisson as my relatable historical figure?
i didn’t make anything up that wasn’t true, but i really spent some time trying to determine how my responses would come off – would i be someone you would look to for teaching? that’s so weird – it’s not something most people ever have a choice in and i could feel my inner meredith grey (not the dark and twisty part) getting all riled up and needy. my normal who-gives-a-fuck attitude that would be applied to these questions in an e-mail forward or something similar takes a backseat when my answers are the basis to something on a bigger – or at least different- scale like this.
but . . . i’m happy! and excited, and so eager to kick ass at this. for every moment of self-doubt i can consciously replace it with a memory of something awesome and powerful that has happened in one of my classrooms. i just have to keep repeating, i think i can, i think i can – until i know i can… and banish thoughts like, if only i could like drop 50 pounds and have nice nails and not try quite so hard to be funny sometimes to the point where i come off smart-mouthed.
to be continued . . .
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for better or worse, i’ve found that i write less when r is around — most of the stories i would type up end up going into her ears. though i guess ‘around’ is a loose term, since she is in boston and i still consider her ‘around’ right now, since she is available to me.
tripp :: feb 02 2009 :: 7:49 pm