Abstract:

Laura Reasoner Jones enjoys the perks of her new technology job in the school system--an office with a powerful laptop, while she still passes through the doors of an elementary school every day.

Jones, L.R. (2004). Creature comforts. Teacher Leaders Network diaries. Retrieved from the Teacher Leaders Network 11 Apr 2008. Link: http://www.teacherleaders.org/old_site/diaries04_05/LJ30_04_05.html 

Full Text:

Creature Comforts

Well, I've been on this new job a couple of weeks, and I am feeling a little less stressed. I have my new, more powerful laptop that, while it has a few weird quirks, is really very nice and fun to use. I have an office instead of a car to work in, a phone, a new printer, and a mini-refrigerator. And they are offering me (threatening me with) a cell phone and a PDA. I guess since I am working on a technology project, I probably shouldn't tell anyone that Julie will have to program numbers into the cell phone for me.

But as I have been settling in here, and working hard to see the path ahead, I have come to realize that there is a huge piece missing in career counseling and exploration. Exposing children to careers through the people who've chosen them is important, but I think that we need to expose kids to places, to environments, so that they can determine where they feel most comfortable.

I look at my own family, for instance. Deep in his heart, my wonderful husband wants to be a funeral director. He is very comfortable in that setting, as odd as it sounds, and in his current job as Pastoral Ministries Manager for a large retirement community, he goes out of his way to work with families whose loved ones have died. He arranges the memorial services, and many times presides over them in his capacity as chaplain. He is at ease in other peoples' sorrow, and can help them with their fear and sadness. Is this comfort level with death a result of his training? No, I don't think so. As a child, his best friend was the son of the funeral director in the small Ohio town where they grew up. He played in the mortuary as a little boy and worked there as a teenager. He is completely comfortable in that setting and it transfers to his work today.

If you asked my older daughter Christiana how she sees her ideal life, she would draw or describe herself driving around all day in a Mercedes-Benz convertible with the top down, sunglasses on, radio blaring, sun-streaked hair streaming in the wind, talking on her cell phone, and smiling at people. Well, she has managed to find a career that lets her do exactly that. She now sells ultrasound equipment for a large Fortune 500 company, she drives around all day in an expensive car, and when she stops, she smiles at people so they will buy her goods. She has found not only a career where she excels, but a place, an environment, where she is comfortable.

But then, if you ask my daughter Julie where she is most comfortable, you will see where my thoughts are going. Julie says she wants to be a teacher, but she doesn't act like it. She never liked school; she only liked being there with her friends. She complains about little kids. She never reads or thinks about how children learn. Instead, she really just wants to travel. Put her in an airport or on a train, and she comes alive. She says right out loud, "I love this place." While others of us are fretting about long security lines or baggage claim, Julie is alert to everything and is just plain enjoying herself.

In my spare time, I am working on her life movie, a compilation of old pictures and video set to her favorite music over the years. And the very first video I have of her shows her at about age one outside in the yard pointing at airplanes in the sky. The underlying theme of her life is definitely flight. I have movies of Julie bungee-jumping, of her tied up in a harness doing that insane Sky Flyer ride at Kings Dominion, doing chin-ups to impress Marine recruiters at an Air Show, hang-gliding and parasailing at the beach, and taking a free flight lesson as part of a special mom-planned career day at age 12. Christie's life movie has none of these kinds of footage; she's the one who says, "If I die in a plane crash, I want to be in a plane big enough to make the national news."

Julie spends all of her spare cash on airline tickets. That is where she is most comfortable and happiest—traveling. But who ever helped her see that in high school, or even now in college? Her career planning needs a jump-start, and at this age, it is getting expensive.

Wouldn't it be cool if kids could explore careers by actually being in many different work places from an early age? And as they plan for college or careers, couldn't we at least include questions and reflections about places that make them happy, alive, or comfortable?

My place of comfort

Where is this going? Well, I have often thought, but never really put into words until now, that I am truly at ease in a school building. That is my place of comfort. And although I have been a teacher for over 30 years, I have only worked in an actual school building for one of those years. Until now. My new office is inside a real school and I love it.

The first day I came, they took me upstairs and said, "We can't put you in the administration office; there is no room. So, we have a little office upstairs for you." And they walked me up two flights of stairs down a long hallway past seven classrooms and the library to a little resource office. And they kept apologizing, "This school is due for renovation." But I don't see what they were apologizing for. I am in a school at last.

Every day now, I walk into my new building at 6:45 A.M., passing under the name of the school carved into the stone lintel over the door. My school has glass-block windows in the stairways, and steps that are worn down from the passing of little feet, especially as you turn the corners. It has a cafeteria and a gym. I walk to my office down a long hallway lined with institutional brown and green tiles on the lower half and cinderblock on the top half. I walk under clocks that are suspended from the high ceilings. I pass bathroom doors that have little brass "Girls" and "Boys" signs over the doorways. I pass floor-to-ceiling bulletin boards covered in construction-paper snowmen and salt-clay maps.

I open my glass-windowed office door and see the green chalkboards. And I realize that I have come full circle. I am ten years old again in my Indianapolis elementary school, and I am at home.

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