Magic!

So the "rah rah" portion of today wasn't too onerous. The speaker was Billy Riggs, a "motivational speaker" who does a whole performance with humor and magic (probably the best part of the show) woven with some pithy commentary on teaching. It contained, as such presentations usually do, a fair level of corny jokes and cheesy smarm (mmmmm.... corn and cheese...), but I didn't have to make animal noises and several of his illusions really were quite impressive. All in all, not bad. You can check him out here if you're in need of a speaker for your large corporation.

As with all pithily inspiring things, I did feel some pull to try to apply what Riggs was saying to my own life (it's a weakness, I admit). While his comments about the psychological barriers that keep us from reaching our potential was intriguing (as obviously I've got a lot of them that I don't even know about--otherwise, I'd be running the world by now), it was his discussion of passion that made the deepest impression on me, though perhaps not in the way he would have expected. He suggested that the best educators are those with a passion for teaching--it was their first thought in the morning and their last as they go to bed. They spend their free time inventing ways to improve their work and reach out to each student in any way they can to change that student's life.

I found myself agreeing with him wholeheartedly. I also realized (again, as I've realized sporadically for the past few years) that that's not me. I am not a great teacher. Sure, I can entertain a class and impart a lesson; I can help people with a concept or make them think about things in a new way. But as a committed educator dedicated to the betterment of my students, I fail. I am, at best, a mediocre teacher, my delightful classroom performance balanced by my terrible out-of-class follow-up and my nonexistent planning. Teaching simply isn't the most important thing in my life, nor can I make it so. Nor do I want to be, really. I have, as I've mentioned, a passion for my subject much greater than I have a passion for students. If the classes I taught were more in line with that--if I were teaching literature or creative writing, for instance--I think I'd be better. But that's a maybe. It's callous and cold-hearted, but I must come to grips with reality.

That, of course, has me thinking about what my passions really are, and that leads me to divulge to you the secrets of my Twenty Year Plan. Don't go stealing it now, 'cause it's mine.

As the bible sayeth, we should always preface our plans with, "If God wills it," or something like, so that's how I begin. My passions for the past few years have been three: writing (theoretically), voicework, and, after reading a shockingly powerful book by Michael Card called Scribbling in the Sand: Christ and Creativity, the founding of a Christian artists' community (someday I'll write a post on exactly what that might entail).

So in the near future, Lord willing, I might cut a demo CD and send it off to agents in the hopes of picking up some voicework; if that goes well enough, ideally I'd like to get out of the teaching game, at least full time (I'd still enjoy teaching perhaps one class as an adjunct, especially at Community Christian College). This, ideally, would also lead to my writing going a bit better, as the voicework takes much less planning and outside work than the teaching thing (wherein I spend approximately 48.3 hours grading per class per assignment per day). I think I've mentioned this elsewhere, but Stephen King suggests that despite his myriad jobs--industrial launderer, clerk, reporter, what have you--the only time in his life he couldn't sit down and crank out a five-hundred page novel of an afternoon was when he was teaching. That bodes pretty ill for me.

And if these payed off, then my long-range dreamy little dream is to purchase land, most likely in the northwest, and establish the aforementioned Christian artists' community wherein Christian artists (surprisingly enough) could congregate, work together, and receive mentoring and feedback on their work. There are a thousand other possibilities associated with that, like offering classes to young artists, serving as a waystation for missionary families, producing a Christian arts magazine... To be doing voicework and writing and helping to run such a place would be a dream beyond my ability to hope for it. In any case, if this project were up and heading somewhere in twenty years, I would not be displeased.

I rarely share such large-scale hopes as these, but I figure if I have my small group pulling for me, or at least thinking about the possibility on occasion, that might not be any bad thing.