What the heck am I doing???????????????

So I suppose the title says it all.  Lately I've been feeling a little "buyer's remorse," not enough to change direction but certainly enough to occasionally stop walking and stare at the ceiling wondering, 'what is wrong with me?' or to sit through a cycle of a red-green-yellow-red light because I'm distractedly wondering if I've really given this enough thought or perhaps, I need a few more months (give or take a few years) to really consider what it means that I'd move my children and myself to about 7,000 feet down and 8 miles into one of the Wonders of the World.  Just sayin'.  It's kind of a big thing.
So for you all who are wondering, what is she, nuts?  I suppose the answer is, Jen Kreps Frisch says I'm not.  For you all who know Jen, you know that doesn't hold much water.  Sorry, Krepsy.  But she did point out that you're sane as long as you wonder if you're actually crazy.  She's right, you know.  Those guys mumbling to themselves in puddles of their own pee, they wouldn't actually say, "I think I'm losing it."  In fact, they'll tell you all about the reasons why everyone else is insane and they're the ones with all the reasonable answers and explanations that we refuse to acknowledge, if you ask.  I did that.  Once.

So, I'm at this fabulous training for the IB in a nice urban city on the East coast this week.  I'm leading a workshop, getting newcomers to the IB to come to Jesus and drink the Kool Aid (I have no qualms about mixing metaphors) to be 21st century educators.  My participants are actually some of the nicest people I've ever met, considering I'm bombarding them with a brain dump of highly complex pedagogy and practice.  As they filed out today, our second of three days of said brain dump, they're actually thanking me, telling me how helpful it is and how much they are learning.  It occurs to me, I'm really good at this.  I really know my stuff.  Throw any question at me, no matter how far you reach with your "what if...," I know where all the dust bunnies are under the IB couch, where the loop holes are, and even what's coming in years ahead because I know the moles in the Europe office. 
And I'm walking away from it all.
I'm a master teacher and teacher trainer, and yet I'm going to probably one of the few places I could go where the kids are going to take my butt, wrap it up with a neat little bow, and hand it back to me- probably all within the first few minutes I've been with them.  I am telling you, I've been fairly warned.  When I was down there, the superintendant closed the door and said to me and the two other hopeful applicants, "Just so you know, we have discipline problems here."  He then noticed the school psychologist out the window, and called him in.  He also closed the door, and said, "Just so you know, we have discipline problems here."  Not much long after that, the principal said directly to me, "You don't cry easily, do you?  Because just so you know, we have discipline problems here."  You don't say.
I understand that the kids who find it amusing to climb on the roof of the school during the school day will point to the cliffs and say, "what's so dangerous about being up here?  I was up there yesterrday."  It's also my understanding that they just might, so I've been told, tell me to fuck off and leave the classroom (but at least turning off the lights when they leave, the principal remarked).  And then apparently, there's the turning over of desks and fighting with one another at random intervals.
Confronted with this reality, I really do wonder, what the heck am I doing? 

Getting my head around this



The village, from the helicopter.


So it begins, the next chapter of what has already been a very busy, and adventurous,  life.  This time, the three most important little people in my life are coming with me, and will participate in this adventure with the innocence and wonder of childhood.  That said, I hope they don't hate it.


That is just one of the many conflicting thoughts I've had over the last several months.  It might be that one day, I feel as if I've stumbled upon what is going to be the greatest experience of my life.  But the next day, I might be wondering if perhaps I am overshooting my scope of capabilities and reasoning and am in fact, just having a mid-life crisis and should just take some time to think about this.  Not that I haven't.  Not that I haven't been thinking about it almost 24/7 for the past two months. 

What you see to the left and below are pictures of my trip out there, to interview in person.  They say (whoever "they" are) that the best interviews are the ones in which you're checking out your prospective employers as much as they are checking you out.  So I went, with heart, mind and eyes wide open. 

I owe much to my friends, not the least money, but that which I'll never be able to repay is the unconditional acceptance of my need for fulfillment in unconventional ways.  My beautiful friend Kristin called me from the tarmac of the airport after her flight from Korea had just touched down, just because she'd been thinking of me while she was vacationing there.  I told her I was heading to the Grand Canyon for an interview, and her immediate response was, "I'll go with you." 

The Grand Canyon, from the helicopter.


So indeed, off we went.  Have you ever felt like your best laid plans were actually pretty lame, and that there was a higher force intervening to keep you from having a monumentally horrible experience?  From getting the very last seat on a morning stand by flight to the relief when the car rental agency didn't notice the black scratch marks on the roof of the white car from my camera, I can say there was a compassionate hand guiding us along our way. 

The landscape was amazing.  Kristin pointed out after a few hours that I kept taking in deep breathes, and I realized, "I can breath out here."  We must have looked sufficiently important in my little suit dress shoes, since they let us take the first flight into the village on the helicopter the morning of my interview, and even let me sit in the front.  I got to take in four and a half minutes of the view as we propelled through the canyon to the village.  It was the most amazing vista I'd ever seen in my life, a monument to the forces of nature and brilliance of the color spectrum.

Finally, after a day spent in the village in interviews and mingling with the local kids at a some-what-out-of-the-way swimming hole (far enough from the main drag that the kids froze mid-swandive and head-dunking when we emerged from the brush, until we asked if we could join them), I decided this was the place to go next.  I keep trying to figure out why exactly.  I think I have a few things worked out, but I also know that over the next year or so, I will come to know more reasons why I was called to join the teaching staff at Havasupai Elementary School.