What The Future Holds

I have no regrets about these years as a stay-at-home parent. It's been wonderful and meaningful and also hard. This year, in particular, I have found a sort-of balance with teaching preschool, volunteering in schools, and implementing daily healthy habits of body and mind.

Sometime in late February, though, I felt the urge to look for a job outside the home again. Something in education that would offer added purpose, challenge my intellect, and still allow for the balance it took me so long to appreciate. Maybe in academia? Maybe in a school? Definitely something with a teaching component.

Just as I was beginning to sort out my thinking on what a job like that might be, the pandemic took over and an opportunity to teach Kindergarten and 3rd grade appeared. I could not pass it up. Like, literally, passing it up was not an option.

So for eight weeks now I have been supporting my own kids in their at-home learning, as both a parent and a teacher. This has been rewarding and also terribly difficult, as anyone in the same position might attest. This has also thrown my outside-the-home job search into new relief. Do I want to start a new job when the likelihood of teaching 1st and 4th grades next year is so high? Maybe. Do I want to work from home while also teaching my motivated but also needy kids? Definitely no.

So I'm sitting here in limbo, like so many others, wondering what the future will hold. Hoping that things will become clearer very soon but not counting on that either.