Changes in our life

As you know, our camera is broken, but this doesn't necessarily need to mean that we can't write on here occasionally. Especially considering the emphasis that was put on journal keeping in General conference and how we consider this to be one of our journals.

(For those of you that don't know, or are not members of our church, when I mention General Conference I am referring to a bi-yearly general conference of the LDS (mormon) Church where our Presidency and 12 apostles speak to all the members of our church, worldwide, as one big congregation. Usually this is a setting used to convey pertinent messages and revelation to the church as to how we can better our lives and situations and more fully exemplify our general and individual callings. For us it is similar to a situation like that found in the New TestamentPaul )

I guess I wanted to write today about some changes that have been made in our family lately.

Many of you that know us have known that for the last few years I have been preparing to go to law school. Part of my track for this has been a study of English with an emphasis on rhetorical criticism, specifically an emphasis in the philosophy of pedagogy and it's inherent struggles with issues of race, class, and gender discrimination. What most people don't know is that throughout the majority of the time that I have been in my undergraduate degree I have struggled with the thought of my preparing to go to law school. Not that I don't believe that I could do it, and for that matter be successful as a lawyer, I just haven't ever felt that it was right.

While struggling with this, Christy and I have had many long conversations and have spent much time on our knees in prayer trying to determine the best course of action for us. We've realized that the things that are important for us in this decision are that our family be taken care of, both spiritually and physically/monetarily, and that I am happy in what I do and that I have a feeling that I am living up to my potential based on my experience and talents. For a long time we have considered the possibility of my becoming a teacher but have, on numerous occasions, ruled this possibility out based solely on the consideration of teacher's income.

About a year ago I was speaking with a professor that I have worked for for the last year. He is really the person who got me interested in the philosophy of rhetoric and pedagogy. On this occasion he related to me a story.

It was a story about a man he knew and respected that, after doing great work as a researcher and philosopher in the discipline of rhetoric and pedagogy, decided that the most important and influential role in society was that of teacher, more specifically the role of a teacher in the pre-college years in the public school system. The man then then decided that he would leave his post as a university professor and become an elementary teacher. At the time Dr. Jackson related this story to me, I remember specifically considering the reason why this man would qualify his belief in the importance of teachers to emphasize the importance of not only youth, but the public school system. Over the last year, I have spent a lot of my time researching why this might be the case.

While I believe I have been able to come to some personal conclusions as to why the man qualified his statements, for the purposes of this post I don't think they are important. What is important was that I have now realized that at the time this story was related to me there resonated inside of me something that I didn't realize at the time. I believe that the experiences and prayers of the last year have continuously brought Christy and I both back to this resonation. Our conclusion has been that it is right for me to become a teacher.

Logically it has followed that my college and life experiences have prepared me for teaching English at a High School level. Christy and I have also decided that my studies of discrimination issues and the philosophy of pedagogy and psychology, as well as my experiences with my "minority" and "special needs" siblings, have prepared me to be in the situation that I am. I actually believe that I would do best in a Title I or Inner-City situation.

The next question that has come about, in the wake of all this, is: Since teacher's can teach anywhere, where are we going to end up. While considering the Law track Christy and I got our hearts pretty set on moving to the Northwest, specifically to the Portland/Salem, Oregon/Vancouver, Washington areas. My Dad, in talking all of this over, has been very concerned with our considering this. He and my Mom have a number of friends that have lived in that area and have struggled in raising their kids. I'm not sure about Christy, but I have thought about this a lot.

As she and I have talked about things, I guess I look at it this way: One thing that has been pretty important to us since we got married is for us (and specifically me) to have an "out of Utah" experience where we have some time as a family to be away from extended family. We think that this will cause us to come to depend on one another and solidify our relationship and beliefs. For this to happen it means that we would need to move out of Utah for some period of time. Because of teacher tenure issues we realize that once we get into a place we probably won't be leaving for a while, but if starting over the tenure track means helping our kids not to fail it is not incredibly important that we stay some place because of this.

Knowing that we've wanted to leave for this time, we've considered many different options. We originally thought about moving closer to Virginia. We both don't feel completely right about going all the way to the east coast and though we've thought about the mid-west, it has never been a place that has been considered very likely. Arizona is too hot. California is not where we want to be. This has always really left us with the options of Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and the Northwest.

Though Christy likes horses and I am partial to bull-riding, we are definitely not full-time Cowboys, so Wyoming tends to be ruled out. For us it then becomes a question of would we rather deal with some issues in the Northwest that we can't guarantee that we wouldn't face in Idaho or Colorado and be in our ideal situation, or do we take a road that seems a little easier and go against what we've been feeling is right?

Looking at it this way, we feel really pretty good about Oregon.. at least for a few years.


Anyway, I kinda feel like I've been writing for a while, so I'll leave this post as-is.