Irony and parallel lives

I never set out to be a teacher. Neither did Shulamith. At age 17, I left for college, dreaming of four years of perfect bliss, reading the poetry of Ben Jonson and John Donne, William Blake and John Keats, and discussing it with brilliant professors, whose insights would forever change me. And that's exactly what I did. And it was lovely. But midway though my junior year, it hit me that even lovely things eventually come to an end, and at some point I would graduate and need a job. So I grabbed enough classes on the side to secure a teaching credential.

Shulamith began college as a nursing major, but somewhere in the middle of her first year discovered her violently adversarial relationship with chemistry and anatomy, and switched to education. Both of us came at teaching through the backdoor, never as a real goal. I only taught in the K-12 system for one year before getting married and starting my family. Shulamith taught four years, but both of us quit when our first babies were born.

We love being stay-at-home moms; that career suits us perfectly. That said, we both also need a bit of cash to supplement our husbands' incomes. For me, the answer was to get my Master's degree, opening up the world of adjunct college teaching. With that degree, I could teach just a tiny bit (one night class each semester), still stay home with my kids, and bring home a decent amount of money. And such has been my story for three decades.

Shulamith began serving at Macaroni Grill a couple evenings a week when Matt was home with their kids, until she happened to see an ad for developmental reading and writing teachers at Salt Lake Community College. For developmental (non-college level) classes, a Master's is not required, only a bachelor's with ESL endorsement, which she has. Score! Except she had never taught anyone older than five. It was mildly terrifying.

That was nearly two years ago. Recently, she's added another part-time job, teaching English to Chinese children online through a company called VIPKID. At first, I wasn't going to join her in this endeavor because, truly, I have plenty to do with my three classes at LDS Business College. But she was having so much fun that I became sufficiently intrigued to submit my application and start the process. I was hired. Yay! Except I had never taught anyone younger than 18. It was mildly terrifying.

Now we find ourselves with the exact same two part-time jobs: adjunct instructors of college classes, and ESL teachers of Chinese children. Parallel lives. We spend most of our days together, and much of that time is now spent mentoring each other. What comes as naturally as breathing to me is often foreign to her, and vice versa. She teaches me about synthetic phonics and TPR (Total Physical Response) and various ESL tools. I teach her about sentence analysis and rhetorical strategies and motivating adult students who think they already know how to write.

Don't get me wrong. Shulamith and I are very different people. Though both extroverts, our personalities have many contrasts. I am "Anxiety Girl," able to jump to the worst possible conclusion in a single bound, while Shulmith has never had an anxious day in her life. Right up there with Sponge Bob and President Hinckley, she is one of the most optimistic people I know. She helps me chill when no one else can, and I hope I offer at least something to her in return, if only the security that I do all the worrying for the both of us. Imagine. Before she ever even considers worrying about something, I already have it covered!

They say when God gives you a daughter, he gives you a best friend for life. I know it doesn't always work out that way, but I'm grateful it did for us. But if you'd told me we'd wind up doing the exact same jobs at the exact same time, side by side, I wouldn't have believed you.

Irony and parallel lives.