25 Jobs

My twenty-fifth year as a classroom teacher will come to an end just over a month from now. As important of a job as it is, there are always days I wonder what other paths I could have followed, or what other jobs outside of education I’d be qualified to do if I decided it was time to leave teaching behind. Here’s a list of twenty-five other jobs I think my two-point-five decades of elementary teaching experience would have me prepared to do:

1 - Family counselor: I can spot a kid who has issues going on easily enough. Usually when I meet the family, I can make some solid speculations about what might be going on.
2 - Night custodian: I see the amount of stuff our head custodian has to know to keep the building from falling apart to know that’s WAY beyond me. But constantly having to keep things clean, and working on small, incidental repairs? No problem. I call that Digital Day 5.
3 - Social Events Planner: I don’t want to even try to do the math on how many classroom parties I’ve put together. From sheer repetition, I’m so familiar with everything that needs to be done when throwing together a party I don’t even need to write a checklist.
4 - Travel agent: At least for large groups of people traveling by bus.
5 - Police interrogator: I can sniff out lies like nothing, and more often than not I can get the liar to break.
6 - Bank Teller: Lunch money. Field trips. Book orders. Recorders. Yearbooks. Fund raisers. Carnival tickets. Spirit Wear. I’ve collected money for all of them and have never lost a dime.
7 - Fashion consultant: I’m not saying I’d be the right person to choose an outfit for anyone; my shopping habits are little more than finding a shirt that I don’t hate and then buying it in four or five different colors so I can get through an entire week. However, I’ve certainly seen enough kids rolling through the school sporting examples of fashion don’ts to figure out how to steer people away from them.
8 - Motivational speaker: Anyone who can get a group of 11-year olds to be the least bit excited about doing anything other than playing video games, drawing, or gossiping with their friends should be able to sell tickets to their speaking engagements.
9 - Data processor: I think the reason I don’t know more than the very basics of Microsoft Excel is because I so thoroughly hate making spreadsheets and minimizing the complexities of each student down to a collection of somewhat arbitrary benchmark numbers. But those are the rules we follow when playing the game in the 21st Century, and I can choreograph those numbers into a positive spin with the best of them.
10 - Graphic Designer: I’ve created web sites. Flyers. Posters. Greeting cards. I have somewhere between fifty and one hundred Sharpies in my desk, and I’m pretty sure the real number is closer to the one hundred end of that estimated range.
11 - Researcher: To anyone who thinks there isn’t much more to teaching than just following the directions in a curriculum package and repeating a script, I say HA! Yes, any trained monkey could pull that off without doing any permanent damage, but for anyone ambitious enough to do more than the barest of bare minimums, you need to do your homework and see what resources are out there in the wider world.
12 - Editor: Not only have I spent years of my life deciphering the developing writing skills of several hundred young writers of varying ability, but I’ve also volunteered to review the academic papers and resumés of several colleagues.
13 - Librarian: Recommending books. Organizing. Reading aloud. All in my wheelhouse.
14 - Nutritionist: From the number of times I’ve had to look a kid in the eye and say, “Are you kidding me? You’re seriously eating THAT for breakfast?!”
15 - Meteorologist: They may not always listen, but I try to warn the kids about what the weather has in store for them at recess. When they come back in, wind-burned and shivering because they didn't put on the sweatshirt I recommended, I usually enjoy a sweet and internal "I told you so."
16 - Journalist: Not only do I help write a monthly calendar/newsletter for classroom families this year, but in past years I’ve done it on my own weekly. I’ve even had an article or two related to something going on at school show up in the local newspaper.
17 - Web master: I ushered the school web site through at least three evolutionary stages.
18 - DJ: I’ve programmed several Pandora stations based around my possible moods at the end of the school day, to make sure I have the right thing to listen to as I stay late to either pick up the pieces of whatever went wrong that day or proactively try to prevent it from happening again.
19 - Traffic control supervisor: I was in charge of the school safety patrol for fifteen years. Think about that. Fifteen years. How many things in your life can you say you’ve done for fifteen years? 
20 - Carny: I’ve been in charge of the dunk tank at Track and Field Day long enough to feel I can turn on a hose, hand someone a softball, and occasionally fix a simple machine with some proficiency.
21 - Office manager: At least as far as being able to tell people why small paper clips and sticky notes that come packaged accordion-style are some of the worst things ever created.
22 - Waiter: I’m thinking of one person in particular here, and I hope one of my past colleagues reads this because I know how much she will laugh if she does, but there have been years when I’ve had my lunch napkins “borrowed” so many times that I started bringing extras from the cafeteria, just to make sure she had enough for whatever she had packed away in her stainless steel boxed lunch that day.
23 - Gum salesman: I’ve had so many kids spit out their gum so many times over twenty-five years (with this year possibly holding certain records) that it makes me wish I was getting a small percentage of every pack sold to these people.
24 - Author: Because I’m part of the way there already. And man, do I have some stories to tell after twenty-five years….
25 - President of the United States: Because these days it seems like any knucklehead can do this.