Education and Work Prep School:
My Continuing Adventures in My Search for the Perfect Career
Part III
Lynne Fukuda
Instructor of Psychology
Leeward Community College
E-mail: lfukuda@hawaii.edu
Dedicated to all students, past and future. For all their dreams—may they all come true.
My story continues as I take an exhilarating breath of fresh air. Having moved four times in four years—and having changed my jobs just as often—I am now finally in one spot for the next couple of years or so, and I feel settled again. I am reunited with my dear cat and see my nephews more often. Although having to move about like a vagabond and having to say goodbye to new-found friends and places in addition to the expense of moving my things and addresses and such, I find that searching about is not bad at all.
I am still amazed that somehow I instill confidence in others to hire me on, even if the job is temporary, believing in my skills. I have been offered jobs repeatedly that challenge me and stretch me to the limit. “You can do it, I know you can,” some desperate employers have said, smiling, knowing that they could not find anyone better at the time and were willing to take a chance. Perhaps the need to fill a position and the desire to give me a chance combined with the idea that someone new would bring something different prompted my employers to offer me a job. I know with much pride that I did indeed bring something new to the different places where I worked in the past four years, bringing in my knowledge, education, and experience as well as my creativity and the willingness to go the extra mile. I do not regret that I moved on, feeling that each job gave me a stepping-stone to move forward to my future career.
I am grateful for all those opportunities to teach or to work. I know that by feeling I needed to live up to their expectations I tried more than three times as hard as a normal person. Perhaps that is why at the very end of those temporary stints, I was burnt out. And yet, in a very short period of time, like the flame of strong passion, I dreamed my dreams, lived as gaily as I could, and learned and worked to the utmost, as if that job were my very last.
In my lifetime, as I may have mentioned before, I have been a part-time mom and nanny, a foreign language teacher, a kindergarten aide, a university researcher, a hospital lab worker, volunteer counselor, a school counselor, an adult education teacher, a primatologist, a biologist, a distance education specialist, and a college professor of many subjects including math, English, social science, and science. There are other jobs that I held in short summers that I have forgotten, but I know that the knowledge, skills, and experience have all contributed to who I am today.
“Why be so educated and well-trained and have a salary that amounts to nothing and have no permanent job?” someone might ask me, puzzled by my lack of steady employment.
My true passion, as you may know, is writing stories. But how does a writer support oneself? I imagine that like many starving artists living in attics and eating barely anything, and occasionally living on the charity of friends, I too have lived this way, although I have worked hard in the outside world. I have never forgotten my ambitions as a writer and find that having many jobs and meeting many people and having a multitude of experiences is training indeed for my ultimate career—a writer. I do not mind that I must suffer rejection and lack of acknowledgment (although I am immensely happy to be recognized here at AEE); I know that I will live my life following my dreams.
I also have a dream to hold a job that can reach out to and help many people. In my writing, I hope to do this, but as a hands-on person, I would love the privilege of working with young children.
Moving on to the next phase of human development, having finished my growing up years and years of exploration, I have come close to the final chapter in my life, which is self-actualization. Like many people of my age or even older, I know now that success in life is not how much one earns or how important a position is, nor how much power it has, but how much one is able to contribute to society. After being nurtured by others and building up my experience, I am able to be independent, strong, and giving. I will use my remaining years in giving to others, one of my mottos for altruism—to give of oneself joyfully. I do not have things of monetary value, but I hope to teach others, especially those who are yet young, the value of altruism or selflessness. I also wish to let others know that unconditional love is possible, and the power of forgiveness is always in oneself. Happiness is only a thought away—positive attitudes can change everything and will bring many, many returns.
This is also something that I would like to pass on to my future students. Having no children of my own, I feel fate has decided that I become like a parent to many young children. How wasteful it would be if all of my experience and learning were locked away as I cultivated my orchid garden alone and wrote stories in a hermit-like fashion. Pulled back and forth by my two personalities—the very reclusive person who prefers animals and nature to humans, and the very social, fun-loving person who loves to join clubs, do volunteer work, and interact with a multitude of persons—I am always lingering between two worlds. However, being with innocent young children is much like being with animals and with nature. Observing them in their natural forms and seeing the wondrous development take place, month by month, year by year, I am given the gift to be able to behold such works of beauty.
When I am with adults, I feel sometimes that humans are not so nice, and I begin to lose faith in humanity. However, when I am surrounded by children who are filled with dreams and speak of hope and love, I know that all is not lost. Thus investing in young children, rather than investing in stock or land or other types of material wealth, has become my form of getting richly rewarded. Each day that I work with young children, especially as a teacher, I recall a smile, a look of surprise or a profound remark that makes me chuckle. I am filled with laughter and joy as I had been in my youth. I have also found the fountain of youth by teaching children.
Looking at my resume from time to time, I have begun to realize that I had the makings of a perfect schoolteacher, especially an elementary teacher who is indeed a jack-of-all-trades. My past teachers from K-6 have been such persons, able to excel in teaching math, science, social studies, history, English language and literature, and many other subjects. In addition, they were also artistic and loving persons. I have much admiration for all teachers, especially grade school teachers.
“But elementary teachers only know things superficially, just enough to teach the kids,” a person remarked when I told him of my qualifications.
“Why not have a teacher who is able to teach most subjects and have a very deep knowledge of all things?” I asked. Of course, my knowledge and fear of PE would surely get me down one day, but I crossed my fingers, hoping that when I graduated the state would have funds for a full-time PE teacher who would teach my dreaded subject.
At the present time I am researching the causes of anger and aggression in school children. Dreading angry and aggressive children in my own future classroom, I hope to investigate the root of this evil. Why must children not be happy and at peace in school? Why must they suffer such terrible emotions? Some say that is all part of growing up and learning about the world, but in the world of school, as I stated, the place of sanctuary for all children, bullying, teasing, lashing out, and feeling unhappy and rebellious should be out of the picture.
Educating our young children to know all academic subjects is fine, but what if in this process, in this haste to cram their young brains with computers, studying, and competition, we had forgotten to instill the old values that old schools had in the past. In my kindergarten year, where we all played, still babies fresh from the nursery, we did not study. Instead, we studied human interaction, where kindly behavior, prosocial behaviors of caring and sharing, problem solving as a group, mediation and peace-making, and learning manners were all very important.
Why not start elementary school with this strong foundation, not only for a year, but also throughout the K-5 or K-6 years so that students would be able to form friendships easily, adapt to others and to become men and women of peace. I find that the K-6 grades are a living laboratory, where we are able to positively influence a new generation of children who will become our future leaders. Instead of complaining about how the world is coming to an end and that our youth do not have initiative, or have experienced physical deprivation and hardship as the subsequent generations, we must focus on the abilities of these children.
Unlike generations past, today’s children have grown up in unstable family environments and perhaps have adapted to it. In the past, stepfamilies were the source of evil fairy tale characters, but children of today accept the fact that mom and dad have divorced and remarried and formed new families. Children with three different fathers, children with two mothers, children with two fathers who live together and two mothers who form parents, and parents who have never married at all form the norm. I am not saying that this is good or bad, but it is a fact.
Children in this environment may thrive or falter. If they thrive, they must be praised for their adaptability and be supported wherever they go. If they falter, there must be a gentle hand to guide them and tell them that life can be better and is better in the years to come. School would be a place where properly trained educators can guide and lovingly watch over our children who may feel lost. Some without religion, good role models, without many things that would have been abundant in days when mothers stayed at home such as homework help, homemade food and clothing, and a gentle presence, without direction, can be guided easily in school.
On the average, children spend more time with their schoolteachers than with their parents in their waking hours. If children are divided between two divorced parents, the percentage that children spend with a classroom teacher is much greater. If this teacher gave his or her love to the student and nurtured the student each day, will it not be a great influence on the child?
“Oh no, but school is school, it is not a home,” some say.
And yet, hearing the voices of those who were foster children or even orphans, the feeling of belonging to a group was of utmost importance. Those who were brave and healthy made it to adulthood and formed their own families or joined the services.
I met a student once, a Navy cook, who remarked, “I was an orphan. Fortunately, I was from a large family, and my older brothers and sisters raised me. So when I joined the Navy and was out at sea for months, I never felt lonely. I feel like the guys I work with are my true family.”
In the book Jarhead, about a marine who does not have direction in young adulthood and joins the marines, the main character states something similar: “The marines was my family and the guys were my brothers.”
If there is no opportunity for our youth to join the forces, or there is opposition to it, our unguided youth will join other groups such as gangs and drug abusers. Some manage to run away from their homes, mistakenly searching for a better life only to wind up on the streets as prostitutes and druggies or drug peddlers.
School, then, is a place where children can grow and explore safely. The longer we can keep them, not in a way of imprisonment but of enrichment, than we can give them the skills to survive the harsh world that is often full of trickery, crime, betrayal, and ugliness. In the outside world, there may be no second chance. A drug overdose, exposure to HIV, enslavement, and the lack of self-esteem to return to the world of decent men and women will drive youth away so that there is no hope for rehabilitation.
In school we find our family away from home, away from our biological family. Classmates become our brothers and sisters, teachers become, as one kindergartener told me truthfully, “a school mommy” or a school daddy. Combining our different backgrounds, our different ways of doing things, and our ways of learning and thinking, we all form a “super family” in school. It is in school that we find our lifelong friends and even our mates, it is in school that we find a part of ourselves that we did not know before. It is in sharing our similarities and differences and watching one another grow that we become one as a society. Like a microcosm of true society, we have many components of our larger world. And yet, ideals, dreams, and many beautiful things are not crushed by schools as much as in the outside world. Our school subjects, school cultures, sometimes have very little resemblance to the outside world, and yet, like beloved toys and things we collect in childhood, school is a place where things remain the same, and yet, change with our perspectives.
Practicing how to work and behave in school, we are socialized for the real world. Trying out new things in school, we go on to greater things. It is here that a future is formed. It is here that we dream our dreams. No one would dare laugh at us, because that laughter would only echo back at us. But instead of crushing our dreams there are many within the school who coach, encourage, and indulge us, almost as much as our favorite uncle or aunt or grandparents do. Unlike many parents, though, they do not tell us that reality is harsh, and we are doomed to failure. Instead, even that faintest hope is nurtured, like a weak seedling struggling to survive. It is in school that this little seedling survives and sometimes influences the whole world.
Thus, it is our duty, as educators, to instill in our students the love for learning, the love for good works, and the love for good things in life. It is in school that we can do this successfully with great effort. The more we invest in our efforts, the more our yields do grow, much like the plants in our special greenhouse. We must realize that although education has no monetary value, it is forever. You can take it with you wherever you go.
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