2020 Has Been a Big Year or I Finally Quit

I finally quit school. I won’t say I left teaching.

Callings stick with us forever. Every dad is a teacher.

I taught for a long time, even became an administrator.

I taught Biblical studies, Latin, Greek, Geometry, Statistics, Algebra 2, Pre-Algebra, Logic, Public Speaking, Introduction to Computer Programming, and Strength and Conditioning. In college I taught introduction to systematic theology and the history of Christianity in the United States.

I had fun.

In my initial plan, I was going to take Lambda school courses at night and apply for a new job in the Spring and make next year my last. I mentioned this to a friend who’s the VP of a software company. He called me the next day and said I should just quit teaching now and to expect an offer. Anyway, I did. Because my attention and focus is less diffuse, I actually have more time to be a classicist and a lot of folks at the company are pretty entrepreneurial outside of work, but they also like what we do because it’s an unexpectedly important contribution. So over all, it’s been a great place to work. By a strange coincidence (providence? always) one of my colleagues worked on the same project as my dad in Singapore in the 80s, though they never met.

Anyway, one of these days I’ll post a list of things that need optimization in the classical Christian high school education domain. I’ve observed many dozens of these over the years and used to spend many hours every week puzzling over how to do it. I still do as the homeschooling of my children occupies my mind constantly.

I will say this one thing: my main preference in my current job over my previous on is this: I get to solve real problems as they come up. Here’s what I mean. I solve problems that really matter for peoples’ emotional well-being in jobs that use our software. This means that we even provide for their physical safety. The problems are real problems.

In education, you really want to solve real problems. Here’s the most-real problem of education: how to you pass down a tradition of habits that includes a body of skills and knowledge to a group of people with diverse family structures and backgrounds while still teaching individuals think logically and independently from the masses, particularly when mass media culture occupies so much of the time of the young? It’s a serious problem and it matters.

You often end up solving made-up problems instead: a new seminar invents a new method, a new paper-work, or a new “thing” and your whole workflow has to conform to it so you suss . In other words, the chief problem of education: “how can we create a curriculum that delivers the most important skills, knowledge, and experiences of the past in a way that meets the needs of individual students and their families” is often interrupted by, accreditation guidelines, dress-code minutiae, or a small-rudder on a big ship mindset where no agility is allowed.

2020 has been a big year for me. I got the strongest I’ve ever been, got the sickest I’ve ever been (lost 17 pounds in 14 days and all my gainz), switched careers, bought a house, probably had Covid-19 in January, and probably some other items I’ve left out.

Anyway, even though I work more hours now, I’ll probably have more time to contribute to my own blog. Or maybe not. But I hope to.