Taking the Leap (part one)

For a number of years my wife and I had talked of traveling to various countries in the world with a desire to spend enough time in an exotic place to develop and understanding of the culture and a feel for the “way of life.” We discussed ways of accomplishing this with the limited income we were experiencing as teachers relatively new to the profession.  Even as our paychecks grew (meagerly) we still found it difficult to travel outside of the U.S. and still get a valuable experience for our money. After airfare and lodging there was never much left in the proverbial pot to do much with. We discussed running an educational travel tour and take students abroad, but felt it would not provide the experience for us that we desired. International teaching was something we were interested in, but decided we’d run into the same issues that frustrated us about the educational system here in the U.S.  We lived in the great metropolis of Seattle in Washington State, and spent our summers road tripping the West coast and Southwest and soaking in the sun on Oregon beaches. During those summers we truly took a break from the classroom environment and returned refreshed for our meetings and “staff retreats” before the school year officially started.  Although we both enjoyed working with students, we quickly found those summer memories struggling to sustain our good dispositions as we ran up against issues that would frustrate and infuriate us both, and dispel any idealistic teacher dreams that we had cultivated over the past summer. After teaching for fifteen years we felt it was time for a change and began talking seriously about international teaching opportunities.  We figured that experiencing the same types of issues in other countries was at least as appealing as experiencing them in the U.S. with the added bonus that at least it would be someplace new…a possible great adventure.

This is an installment in a series that chronicles my own experiences as an artist and teacher ditching the daily grind and moving from Seattle, WA to Shanghai, China.