Ugh.

I wish I had something clever to share with you all, but I just need to post an update that I am feeling extremely overwhelmed right now.

Last week I went back to work. This week I started school. And I am already so far behind and have no idea where I am going to get the hours in my day. I have underestimated my ability to multi-task by about 1000%.

Something will have to give I'm just not sure what. I was having all sorts of thoughts today about quitting school, quitting work, quitting both, you name it. I'm sure things will work itself out sooner rather than later but in the meantime I am struggling to even know where to start on my massive to do list.

Hopefully I will get back to regular programming shortly.

The teaching profession

This will be a mostly-lame update on my schooling progress and schooling future.

I am nearly finished with my first semester at CU in the teaching licensure Post BA program. I was not sure what to expect from this program or the classes, but I can say that by and large I have thoroughly enjoyed my classes. They have not seemed very hard to me, for the most part they are interesting, and I feel as though I am learning valuable information. I can say with certainty that they are nothing like any of the classes I took at UCLA. Some of it is due to educational changes with college classes in general, some due to the differences between UCLA and CU, and some due to the specific nature of education/teaching certification classes. Friends have insisted that the biggest change is the fact that I'm 35 now and not 22 and immature. I wish I could say that was the case... I don't feel significantly smarter now than I did 13 years ago (although certainly more mature), and I worked about 20 times harder at UCLA for sometimes meager achievements. If I had 4 years of classes like these at UCLA, I can surmise that I would have sailed through with close to a 4.0 GPA.

The licensure requirements for teachers is increasing at a rapid pace. Part of it is due to No Child Left Behind and some of the teacher qualifications listed as a part of that bill. Policy makers are also learning a lot about students and the best environments for learning. Elementary school is very different now than when I went to school, and some of the changes are huge improvements on some outdated, cookie-cutter curriculums.

A week before spring break CU announced that they were discontinuing my current program and making some drastic changes going forward. The state is changing some of their requirements and they have also done research over the years to see what graduating teachers found most useful in their first years of teaching. CU is not all bad here in making this change, but it comes at a very inopportune time for me. The worst news of the program switch is that they are discontinuing a number of the existing courses and there is a very short time period where I can take those classes. Since I am taking the fall off because of baby deux this affects me in a big way. Also I am a part time student and had hoped to stretch my classes out for a very long time. Now this will be much more difficult.

My advisor was very understanding and tried to make some accommodations for my situation. The bottom line is that I'm going to have to take some classes with the new program students and some of the classes I take may be repetitive from what I've already completed. The new program is called a "cohort program" where a group of students get accepted and have to take the same classes together at the exact same time. So there is no part time option for new students. And it will be strange to be in classrooms with a group of people who all know each other well, but I can get over that pretty quickly.

I am constantly amazed at the sheer number of courses and requirements I need in order to become licensed. This is one of the lowest paying professions in America. How can they make you complete a year of full time school, a half-year of student teaching (for no pay), and a national license exam for a job that often has starting salaries at $40k? I can think of a lot of other jobs (some that I've had) that paid a lot more than that and required no formal education. I know this is one of the most important jobs in this country but I feel like maybe the state regulations are overpreparing us from a coursework perspective. One of the largest intangibles in becoming a proficient teacher is experience and the ability to relate to children. How can you teach that in coursework? When I think back on my best teachers, I think about teachers who had passion, enthusiasm and an ability to relate to students. There has not been one mention of that in my coursework so far, and I don't see any courses titled "how to reach your students" or "how to motivate your students". Instead we focus on how much they should be writing, reading, learning about science, etc.

The financial stress of my schooling (and childcare) is going to weigh on the family heavily over the next year and a half. But I just keep telling myself that it's all going to work out somehow. I know it's a somewhat blind faith, but if I didn't have it I would go insane.

For now I have to write a few more papers and finish up a bunch of projects before my last day of school on May 1.

MIA

I have been MIA the last couple of days, and I plan to be even more MIA over the next week and a half.

Yes, you guessed it, our trip is finally here. Woo-hoo! I probably won't post an entry again before we leave. And it's doubtful I'll post when I'm away, but if I'm feeling inspired I might do it.

The buds are forming on the bushes and trees in Boulder, and the tulips and daffodils are starting to come out of the ground. Nothing is blooming yet, mind you, but I can sense that we are close to some nice weather. I think by the time we return from our trip we might be in SPRING.

I received some icky news yesterday in that the CU elementary education program is completely and totally changing and everyone in the existing program needs to complete courses ASAP before the courses are no longer available. Someone put together a schedule for me that is completely unrealistic, and doesn't even factor in that I need to take off the fall to have a baby. I walked into the advisor's office and told her as such and she gave me this look like I had just swung her cat around the room by it's tail. I have the terrible feeling that I am going to have to drop out of my current program and apply to the new program, which is stressful in itself because I'm not sure the courses I've taken will be accepted in the new program (thus making this semester a total waste). To add to the stress, they are basically making it impossible to do this program part time in the future, as you enter your program with the same 20 students and take all the same classes in the same sequence. But these are all full time students. Ugh. Sometimes I really detest bureaucratic systems where they make these decisions without thinking about the little people they hurt. I have a meeting with the advisor on the Monday after I return, and we will see what comes of that meeting. Based on her initial reaction, it doesn't look good.

I hope everyone has a great Easter and I will update lots upon my return.

Co-ed life awaits

This is my last week before school starts. School? What? Yep, you heard it right, school. Back story is below.

As many new moms discover, that perfect balance of working and staying home is near impossible to find. I don't know too many women who will openly say that they have the perfect balance (the rich are excluded). A lot of the full-time working moms I know wish they could be home more. And stay-at-home moms often wish they had something other than parenting to do at least a few hours a week. (I do actually know a few women who love not having to work anymore, and don't ever plan to go back, but they are few and far between.)

I did not know what I would feel like after I had my first child. I thought I might want to go back to work full time, but also thought I might want to stay home full time. 20 months into this journey of motherhood I know a lot more about what I want in the balance. If I could mold my week-day life with a bunch of non-existent "life creating clay", I would choose to work about 10 hours a week, reserve 5 hours to do personal/workout things, and spend the remaining time with Delaney. The big problem there is that finding child care for such a small amount of time per week is really hard, especially if you want anyone reputable. And any job that will take you for that small amount of time generally does not pay you enough to cover the child care.

It's harder for my generation (X, in case you were wondering) to stay home full time after having children for a few reasons. First and foremost we are having children later than our parents had us. Because of this most of us have spent a lot of years building a career, getting secondary educations, and climbing whatever corporate ladder (sometimes a few different ones) before marriage was even in the picture. Of course this isn't true for everyone, but the majority of my friends did not have children until they were 30 (the California bias in location of my friends is a big factor here). I think the habit of working and succeeding pulls at women more when you have done it for 10+ years. One other big factor is the increase in cost-of-living. I know what my parents paid in mortgage in the early 70's (and Kevin's parents) was significantly less as a percentage of their monthly income, than it is for us today. And the last reason I have noticed, and this is really just my personal circle, is that older women are encouraging women like me to keep their working foot in the door. They know first-hand how hard it is to enter the working world after taking many years off while their children are young. Increase in divorce, lack of personal identity, and financial contributions are all other reasons I have heard older women use as encouragement to keep working. Even my mother-in-law Jo, who staunchly believes I should be home full time, would admit that keeping a tiny bit of my career going wouldn't be a bad idea.

I have crunched our financial numbers a lot over the last 20 months in the hopes that I will come out with a statement at the end that says "Result = Courtney quits". But darnit if every time I crunch those numbers it comes out in the "Result = pipe dreaming again". Our mortgage is too expensive and would be greater than 50% of Kevin's take home income if I were to quit.

So I've been thinking, and talking, and listening to other mom's over the last year and a half to see if I could create a more satisfying balance. Just about every day I wish that my work situation was different, and after 450+ days of thinking that, it starts to wear on you. I can think and think all I want and it's not going to bring about a different life. So I need to act.

Enter school. I have looked at some close acquiantances, most notably my friend Lara, and watched how they manage the work-parent balance in the teaching profession. I think it depends on what grade or subject is taught, but by and large what I have observed is that most teachers who are also moms are pretty happy with their balance. Especially if they have a teaching job that doesn't require a lot of after school work (I realize those are few and far between).

So I am going back to school to get my teaching credential for elementary school. Ideally it will be followed with a masters is ESL or literacy, one of the teaching specialties that requires a masters degree. These specialties allow you to work with smaller groups of children and are also typically more willing to carve out a part time schedule if you would like it.

When I tell people about my career switch, most people ask "is teaching what you always wanted to do?", to which I usually have to reply "no". But working as an Ecommerce Marketing Manager for a software company is not at all what I wanted to do either. So why not actually do something that works better with my kid/s schedules and also makes a difference in a childs life? At least there's that at the end of the day.

A few people have asked what I would do if I REALLY had the opportunity to start from scratch. The answer is probably writing movie reviews, music reviews or working with animals. I am in the process of writing movie reviews for every movie I see as a side interest to working/parenting/going to school. Sounds easy, right? You can't consider writing movie reviews until you have a lot of them under your belt and can prove that you can write. So if something were to happen on that front while I am getting my teaching credential, great.

Otherwise it's off to co-ed life for the next 1-4 years to get the credentials necessary to teach our youth.