logistix

A tentative game plan:

• National Board Certification
• Establish tenure
  
• Apply to law school

There are some holes here. First of all, besides professional development (which I DO take seriously), the main reason for NBC is the $50K incentive, which is paid out as a $5K yearly bonus. I assume you must be employed within the DOE as a teacher in order to benefit from this. Makes sense. So if I scamper off to law school (ostensibly for the quarter-life career change), are the blood, sweat and tears of NBC still worth it? Will I be allowed to reap the benefits upon my return to teaching? (Which I do envision with a certain amount of clarity.)

On paper this all looks so stupid. Why would I want to get all set up in the DOE and then abscond? Well ... because I can. I think. Actually, I'm sure I can; what I mean is, I have to check if I may leave with the expectation of returning and benefiting financially from my certification. Just last year my goal was to secure tenure and then try a private school - this isn't so different. Grab my insurance, take a trip ... come back if I want to. Come back if I need to. It's not exactly Plan P (the patisserie school plan.)

I'm far less idealistic than I used to be ... but I still think I could do this if I wanted to.

Oh, but I was talking about holes. Others: 1) I nearly ran out of steam toward the end of my master's program. Can i survive a JD program? Maybe the reason I faltered at the end of the MEd was because I jumped into the program without being completely ready to re-enter the academic fray. I let external forces push me HARD when I lost the will to push myself - despite the fact that I was happy to be a non-licensed part-time teacher for the time being. Of course i'm thankful for the results - being employed full-time is great - but I know in my heart that I'd have been so much more passionate about the steps toward that degree if it had been solely my determination.

And did i mention that i still don't possess a teaching license? finished my program with honors, acing the praxis and the university's comprehensive exam, and so am certified ... just never filed the paperwork for the license. that's less of a hole in logic than it is a hole in my head.

There's more to life than the things I've been consumed with lately ... which reminds me, I'll have to blog soon on my reasons for wanting to go to law school. (I do after all want to do something with my life other than collect academic degrees.) It's certainly not that I'm sick of teaching ... far from it. Well, maybe not that far from it ... more like, it's not that i'm sick of children. Far from that. I just think that there are other things that Ican do, and that I've always wanted to do - like advocate for children outside of the classroom. Practically every day I'm in the classroom I can think of ways I'd be useful outside of it, helping the same children. Also, I've always been interested in adoption law.

Going to go ruminate offline ...