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 OpenAI. (2025). ChatGPT (May 14 version) [AI image generator]. https://chatgpt.com/image. 

References

Part 1: 

To teach or not to teach. That is the question.

Growing up, I had always loved history. Every summer, my family would take a road trip to some destination in the U.S., and along the way, we would stop at historical sites such as battlefields, national monuments, and more. To pass the time in the car, I would read; mostly military history books or biographies of leaders. I remember being an eight-year-old on a family trip to Florida, reading Shelby Foote’s three-volume series on the Civil War, and forcing my family to stop at numerous battlefields along the way.

By the time college came around, I had already decided that I was going to study history, but I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do with it after graduation. To hedge my bets, I decided that I could either become an attorney or go into education, as those are two very common paths for history majors. By the time my senior year of college came, I had been preparing for both. That fall, I took the LSAT, applied to law schools, and was accepted to my top two choices. However, the following spring, I began my student teaching placement—and I loved it. I quickly realized that my favorite part of teaching wasn’t the lesson planning, the prep work, or the administrative tasks, but rather interacting with people. I realized that law school and a career as an attorney would not be for me.

After graduating from college, I returned to my small, rural hometown in Southern Illinois. While I did not have a full-time teaching position, I had plenty of work to keep me busy. Most of the time, you could find me subbing in a classroom anywhere from kindergarten to senior year of high school, or, on days when I didn’t receive a subbing assignment, working at my father’s animal hospital doing kennel work, walking dogs, giving them baths, and cleaning and sweeping around the building. One day, toward the end of the fall semester, while subbing at the high school, the principal, who had been my teacher when I was a student, walked into the classroom. He came to offer me a long-term substitute position for a maternity leave, teaching geometry and algebra. The only problem was that I wasn’t certified to teach those subjects at any level. Apparently, no one had applied for the position, and they needed a certified teacher regardless of content area. I spent the spring semester relearning geometry and algebra, staying a few days ahead of my students. While challenging, I enjoyed working with the kids during their regular teacher's maternity leave. 

Halfway through the spring semester, I was contacted by the junior high principal to set up an after-school meeting. Not knowing what the meeting was about, I walked across the parking lot separating the high school and junior high buildings and into the principal’s office. There, he offered me a position teaching eighth-grade social studies. While initially confused, he explained that he had spoken with the high school principal and wanted me as part of their team after seeing the effort I put into teaching a subject outside my certification area. I would go on to teach eighth-grade social studies for two years at Carlyle Junior High, in the very classroom I had once sat in as a student nearly a decade earlier.

Part 2:

To The Frozen Wastelands of the North

(a.k.a. Chicago and it's suburbs)