Linda Bilak’ Blog

I was tagged by Terry Shay(twitter @tjshay) for the worst job meme that taught you a lesson for your current career.  I begged off on my responsibility to complete by still being up to my eyeballs in teaching at this date in June. Well an unexpected field trip has alleviated some of my duties today and I have a moment to complete the task.

Here is the original question: Looking back on your life, what was the “worst job” you ever had that ironically helped prepare you to one day become an educator?

I am sure no one would see this coming in a million years.   No, it was not the gig as Assistant Director/Arts and Crafts person for 4, 5 and 6 year olds at a Summer Recreation Program in my town.(hours of gluing and painting stuff to ‘pre-assembly’ for tiny hands to finish-beat working Burger King like most of my friends) Nor was it the job as Dance Instructor at the same sleep away camp I attended as an adolescent in the Adirondacks. (It was fun at 14- it was outrageous at 18!I always suspected the staff had wayyyy more fun after hours.)

The job that really affected how I view my professional responsibilities as a paying JOB was the short stint I did as a temp at Chemical Bank on Long Island. I was assigned the collections department.  I got to see the reality of debt from the financial institution end of it. Talk about depressing.  There were  sections of collectors who worked in three areas.

Join me on the Dantesque tour of credit hell:

The first group was the 30 day arena.  These people called you obviously if you had missed a payment on your house, car, boat, credit card, loan whatever after a short period. I am sure they heard lots of “Oops! Did that not get sent on time- I am so sorry.”

Then you moved into the 60 day collectors. These people were less forgiving on the phone and made frequent follow up calls daily. It is hard to plead ignorance to them. They don’t buy it.

The last group was the doomed 90 day collectors. I felt sadness just walking near this area to deliver their mail. These people were about to foreclose on houses, repo cars or boats and come take what was rightfully the bank’s property.

What did I learn here in this office environment?

• I hate cubicles. I could never work in such a divided substructure(Claustrophobia aside…..)
• It was mind-numbing work to do menial tasks all day like answer the phone and sort other people’s paper(even if I was the best alphabetizer the temp agency had ever seen)
• DEBT is a horrible thing- and even the well intentioned can find themselves in a bad place financially and FAST.

Teaching for many of us is often described as a passion, a calling,  a reason for being.  Yet let’s not forget it is also our work, our job, our livelihood.  It is the way we make our means to support ourselves financially. It is a responsibility of ours to be ever vigil of our fiscal well being.  Money smarts is the lesson I learned to let me be an educator who did not have  to worry about how to pay my student loans.We all know they don’t teach that in teacher prep programs.

Today would have been the day I was to carry the Olympic torch in Shangri-La, China. How sad to think of the people of China. The last thing on their minds is the August Summer Games. I hope the three winners brought a check for earthquake relief efforts with them.

I would have. 

Teachers died in their classrooms with their students. How tragic. 

69, 000 people.

This has been a hard year. I have had to struggle to get my students to want to do more than the minimum. Of course, there are those students who do go beyond expectations. There always are. Unfortunately, the norm is not those children.  I tried to get an active exchange going on epals again this year.  It was difficult to encourage students to write beyond a single sentence in Spanish(their target language).  I found myself approving the same tired old messages(example: My name is_____. What do you look like?)  My collaborative partner and I exchanged  class pictures via our own websites/blogs.   I think Pedro and I did the best we could to encourage the communication to expand beyond the simplistic, banal messages. In truth, I think the Spanish students of La Solana did a much better job of trying to keep it going and interesting. Pedro- gracias a ti,  casi llegamos al fin del año escolar con éxito.

I just read with horror a message written by one of my students to one of the Spanish exchange partners. Bear in mind this student should know better. His grade is in the top 5% of his class and has never been a behavior issue.

(name)

Why do you write in Spanish? Aren’t you supposed to be writing in English? It is getting annoying.

signed,

(one of my students)

I deleted it. Thank God there is a teacher level of monitoring on epals!

That is reflective of the rude behavior they exhibit in class towards each other and to me. I do not have to subject the WORLD to that nonsense. The basic lack of manners is evident no matter how many times we talked about online etiquette.IT was the final straw for me. I am deleting all of their accounts. I may try again next year, since this group is moving on to high school.  ¡Adiós y buena suerte!