Today marks a new chapter in my life. My Marvelwood career came to a close last Saturday after I attended my tenth graduation ceremony. Today, I officially started my new job at EdAdvance. I have spent the past ten years living, eating, teaching, learning and just being on the top of Skiff Mountain in Kent and it’s hard to believe this chapter that was more than a quarter of my life is coming to a close.
When a job opportunity arose just a few months after returning from Finland and barely two months into the new school year there was so much to consider besides changing jobs. Leaving Marvelwood means an entire lifestyle change for me and my family. A house with a mortgage, bills for water, electricity and oil, a septic system! We will have to cook our own meals every night (and morning and afternoon)...and do the dishes! I will have to commute more than a few hundred steps from my front door to my office. My closest friends will not live next door. I will not get to raise my kids in a community where they are always being watched and where I have dozens of responsible babysitters at my disposal at a moment’s notice. Bouncy houses won’t just show up in their front yard with dunk tanks and food trucks and 150 crazy, fun teenagers.
At the same time, I won’t have to walk out in the middle of a bedtime story to go to dorm duty; I can snuggle for as long as I want every night while my children still do actually want my snuggles. I will have full weekends off and can go to Saturday morning library time with the girls. I won’t get sent on a hospital run with a sick teenager in the middle of the night or called out of my house to attend to an advisee. I’m losing my really great schedule with three months off each summer and a month off in March (not to mention the extra long holiday breaks), but I will have vacation time that I can take at the same time as my husband and children so we can enjoy a school vacation together. I can’t just call maintenance to replace an appliance or fix a toilet when it breaks, but I can choose my own appliances and invest in a house that I actually own. And most significant, I will no longer be at a school with students of my own. No one will interrupt my day with a panicked “DOC! I have a paper due tomorrow and I haven’t read the book!” At the same time, no teenager is going to come running up to me to celebrate the 100% on the most recent math test. As a family we weighed all the pros and cons of taking on a new job and a whole new lifestyle and decided that we would go for it.
I’m not just closing the chapter on Marvelwood, I’m also closing my chapter as a classroom teacher (at least for the foreseeable future). I have worked in a classroom for sixteen years. I’ve poured my heart and soul into my students and it has been incredible, but I am ready to grow. Sixteen years ago I started teaching in Camden, NJ because I wanted to do a volunteer program and give back to the world for a year or two. The teaching gig was supposed to be a way to do some service and fill in the gap before I figured out what I was going to do “for real” with my Spanish and French degree. But I fell in love with teaching and working with teenagers and sixteen years later I still absolutely love my students. But when I went applied to UPenn for graduate school the main thrust of my personal statement was about having a bigger impact on American education than I could have in just one classroom.
My new job will give me that opportunity. I will be working on some grants that will allow me to write about and conduct classroom research. I will use what I’ve learned as a teacher, apply what I learned on my Fulbright to Finland, and will go back into the world of public education - an institution in which I strongly believe and support. This job fell in my lap at just the right time and I am so excited to be part of the Skills21 Team at EdAdvance where I will be working with dozens of public schools on different high school programs.
My friends, colleagues and family have asked if I’ll miss Marvelwood. I’ve been quick to talk about how excited I am for my new job and our new home. I won’t miss the politics of New England boarding schools. I won’t miss having only three days off a month. But...the people. Oh how I will miss the people. My closest friends, those that I see on a daily basis, those that are helping to raise my kids, those that entertain me endlessly at meals and in the faculty lounge, I will miss that with all my heart. My girls come bounding off the bus every afternoon and opportunities for playdates abound. We have birthday parties for "Nobody." When winter break comes and it is freezing outside my kids have free reign of an entire gym and a dorm common room is turned into a massive maze of cardboard boxes with the help of some creative friends. Impromptu barbeques happen nearly every week on campus during the summer. I’ve borrowed eggs, milk, cream of tartar, cake mix, diapers, clothes, and countless other things from my friends on campus. Someone is always around to lend a hand when we need to move something. I have never laughed as hard as I have at times in the faculty lounge. The community at Marvelwood is irreplaceable and it is what I am going to miss the most when we move into our new home. I will also miss my students. Every year it’s bittersweet to say goodbye to the seniors as they go off on to their new adventures, but this year I am joining them. As much as I have taught my students over the past many years, they have taught me even more. Working with high schoolers at boarding school, while frustrating and aggravating at times, is also so much fun! It keeps me on my toes, ensures that there is never a dull moment in my life and guarantees a lot of laughs. My students are the reason I kept coming back to the classroom each year. I am truly excited when they come back to campus after the summer. I go to their sports games because I like to watch them play and do something they love. I play in the school orchestra and jazz band not just because I like to play music but because I like to play it with them. I didn’t like Hamlet until I taught it to a student that just loved it. I didn’t know all the rules and the ins and outs of basketball until I taught some boys that loved the sport. I knew nothing about outdoor rock climbing until I learned alongside a group of students and they pushed me to be a better climber and coach. I've traveled to Boston and Vermont to see some of my former students play collegiate sports. The teenagers in my life have kept me young, made sure I know about SnapChat, Instagram and Trivia Crack, and have exposed me to the best viral videos on YouTube. Without them I fear I may fall out of touch with the newest trends and the most recent slang but somehow I will get along.
So as I wrap up my time at Marvelwood and my career as a classroom teacher there are so many thank yous to say to Marvelwood. I am so thankful that the job at Marvelwood fell into my lap ten years ago. I had no idea what Adam and I were going to do when we left Philadelphia to be closer to my family. Marvelwood hired me on the spot and happen to have an open apartment at the end of August and I jumped at the opportunity. Marvelwood will always hold a really special and really big piece of my heart. We started our family here. I was given the incredible opportunity to be a Fulbrighter while at Marvelwood. I met some of my best friends here and so did my children. A huge thank you to my Marvelwood colleagues. You’ve made me laugh, you’ve covered my classes and duties, you’ve made the insanity of boarding school so much fun. And a huge thank you to my students that made every day worth getting out of bed. You all left footprints on my heart and I am so glad I have had the opportunity to teach all of you (yes, even those of you who drove me crazy!).
