a calling

The end of the year is upon me and grades are due. This was my first teaching job as an art teacher, but not the first time teaching art. I have loved every moment and feel as if I mother duck have watched proudly, her little ducklings march away. The year long experience was challenging, exciting, interesting, and most of all, absolutely fun! I have found my calling.

Since childhood I have always known I would be a teacher, a role I often slipped into when I could lure any one into my classroom set up in the garage. Living in a new housing subdivision in Florence, Kentucky, I was in third grade and we were surrounded with pieces of drywall left for me to collect and to use as chalk for my bedroom wall. I would enlist all the dolls and animals in my room to listen to my lectures that I would carefully outline on the walls. After my lecture I would wipe the walls clean with a damp cloth and none would be the wiser. I found out that my theory was completely untrue when my parents discovered the residue, that never really wiped clean, all my notes were revealed in the warm light through the window on my soft, peach painted walls. I had to suffer a slow and painful restriction in my room for at least a week to look at the wall I had regarded as my personal chalkboard.