A Great Night

Every night I get to teach is a great night. It doesn’t matter if it is a sculpting or painting party, a computer class, an art lesson for one person or many, a lecture or presentation, I love to teach. It feels good to empower people, to help them try new things and have fun with it. I like to challenge people to break with the fear of trying and to accept their efforts as accomplishments. Interestingly, it was not always that way. Yes, I liked the spotlight since very little and performing was a lot of fun, but teaching was something I didn’t like. It is not the same as just being in front of people, perform, and leave. Teaching requires commitment and responsibility.

When I was working on my masters in education I began looking at instructional technology as a way to teach indirectly. How does that work? Well, I wanted to design online learning environments and allow people to interact with the computer instead of me. To my surprise, the masters took me to new and very interesting teaching experiences. I was teaching art to children with disabilities, computer skills and applications to working adults and seniors, then special education. From there I began training people in different areas during the years I was pursuing a PhD in education. In December 2012, once I achieved the PhD, I applied to many universities to teach either online or on campus. It seems almost impossible to get a faculty job in a university if you don’t have experience. Of course, you are not going to get experience if no one hires you. Then you get the ‘non-qualified’, ‘over qualified’ (not sure what that means), or the ‘we decided to go with another candidate’ thing.

Last week I received notification that I’ve been accepted as part-time faculty in a university, and not an art class. My PhD is in education and for the first time I will be able to use it in the specialty I worked so hard for. I am not going to reveal the name or location until I take a selfie on campus. Although my Facebook friends already know. Teaching just got more serious. I will continue teaching art and the sculpting and painting parties, the workshops, the seminars, and the private art lessons, but teaching 3 times per week in a continuous seminar for a semester is going to be fantastic. I can’t wait to begin. I can’t wait to see the dream of being a college professor come to pass.