A supervisor/friend suggested I watch a video primarily about Dr. Wayne Dyer and his philosophy pertaining to life and work. The way I understand it is that he believes if a person doesn’t have “dharma” in their life, then it is not a particularly satisfactory life. Many know that dharma means purpose– having true purpose for your actions, for your work.
I don’t know how or why, but there are really only two things I feel that I was “born” to do: teach and play music. One sub-genre that might have eeked it’s way into my dharma within the past twenty years or so is painting, but this is a much less explored area for me. It has yet to reveal itself as a prominent influence in my
life or not. (Two of my paintings are in the right margin.)
Dharma
To focus on teaching as purpose, I seem to be in teaching mode almost everywhere I go and everything I do. Sometimes I even have to suppress it so as not to disturb or offend. At the University of Florida, I was hired while I was a junior to teach a community guitar class on the campus. It was really my first teaching job. Everyone had their own guitars and they were complete beginners, but motivated. I first did a survey of the musical interests; i. e. favorite songs or artists, and then put together a curriculum using as much of the compiled musical interests as I could. Several of the students-Arnie, Laura, and Mark- became good friends for many years. We shared so much about music with each other and I continued to teach them well after the class had ended. Arnie (now a famous cat veterinarian) would joke that since playing guitar was so hard for him, he wanted to become a famous triangle player, maybe for a punk band. Picture that !
After years of teaching as an actual full-time profession, it was noticeable that my inner teacher appeared often, even outside school. Whether it was explaining to various friends how to cook things, or giving explicit instruction on how to play pool, I enjoyed explaining things to people in a step-by-step manner, and honing in on delicately correcting possible errors, hoping not to be annoying.
When I was gifted with the job of creating a Humanities class at my high school, I used the opportunity to create a class that celebrated my true passions: first nine weeks would be the history of art, interlaced with drawing and painting instruction and practice, the second quarter about the history of music, with lessons about singing, rhythm and some playing of guitar and even violin, the third part was all about film/cinema history with units about Hitchcock, satire, and even filmmaking strategies and techniques. Last , we had a deep look at theater focusing on the history of Broadway.
I was fortunate enough to teach my beloved Humanities class for two years. However, right when I hit my stride and started to increase student registration, Covid hit. I taught the rest of Humanities online, which I do admit was not terrible. Mr. Zoom became my best friend and still is in many ways. Yet, I didn’t really get to attain my vision for that Humanities class because after Covid, everything became so complicated and difficult, with hybrid classes and such. Soon after, I retired and abandoned that very favorite class of mine.
I still teach music and sometimes art, and of course I teach all kinds of English classes both live and online–part-time. For awhile I said, “I’m done with teaching… now I’m going to see what other types of jobs are out there in the world.” I went into culinary for a little while since I do enjoy cooking and the food world. I worked at Home Depot for a bit, and I was even learning to make bagels and do butchery.
Back to the Classroom (Virtual or Otherwise)
But I missed teaching…and couldn’t stop pursuing that compulsion of mine. I’m always hoping to improve the world in my own small way through education.
For whatever reason, teaching brings purpose and passion to my life, and all of the problems associated with our educational system haven’t been able to squash the dharma within me.
I’ve created some lessons for teaching English and other topics that can be found at my online store “Literary Ladder Lessons.” Here’s the link https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/store/literary-ladder-lessons
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