Awakening
I began my teaching career in an urban school district by happenstance after I was
unable to secure a position in the suburbs. My first teaching assignment came mid-year as
a long-term substitute in an eighth grade science class. I was the fourth in a series of
supposedly long-term substitutes whose assignments had begun in early November when
the regular classroom teacher had taken a leave of absence due to illness. My three
predecessors all had quit the job within a few days or weeks of starting. An indication of
the difficulty of the position emerged from a student survey I employed at the onset of
my teaching. When asked what was the most important thing learned in science thus far,
one student replied, “I learned that you can have three heart attacks and still not die!”
Apparently this was the ailment that afforded me my first teaching position