Choices, Chances and Changes How I got here from there

There comes a time in every person’s life when one must decide if where they are going is leading to where they want to be. Perhaps you have sought opportunities that are not now fulfilling. Can you dare to change direction?

For me the question arose while I was in Juneau. I had already enjoyed a couple of interesting career moves from my original home in Anchorage.

I had been living a couple of years in the various harbors of the Juneau/Douglas area on my sailboat, working for non-profit corporations promoting Alaska Public Education to lawmakers. Life was streaming by. During the workweek I did paperwork and interacted with various people to promote public education causes. On the weekends I enjoyed a Jimmy Buffett, “A Pirate Looks at 40” lifestyle, or sailed around the area.

But what did I really want to DO with my life?

Many people face this challenge at some point.

As a youth I had generally disdained my teachers in high school, with a few exceptions. I had regarded the entire public school system as 19th century learning factories. Now I was singing its praises to those who funded it. As a student I had done only as well as I needed to do to keep the adults who always told me I could do better off my back.

School was a necessary evil. I had managed to gain a bachelor’s degree–and the former Chancellor of the University of Alaska, Anchorage had recruited me to be his legislative aide. He brought me to Juneau in 1982.

It occurred to me: What if I could help people who could not tolerate the public education system? Could I be the kind of teacher to young Alaskans so many others  might have been for me?

To become a teacher required a new tack; I needed to pull the tiller in a new direction and quickly adjust the sails. It meant finding the prevailing winds going back to school.

I was no stranger to the University of Alaska, Juneau as it was called then. I had taken a class in photography specifically so I could use their darkroom to process images I had taken for my legislator boss. While I had previously made my living with my cameras, the class was a bust for me and I took an F for lack of participation. That bad grade later haunted me when I needed to have a good grade-point average to gain Alaska certification as a Type A teacher.

Lesson learned.

So I took classes I thought would help me be the kind of teacher who could be successful in rural Alaska. I had attended public school in a village. In addition to the courses required to gain certification I took classes in small engine repair, marine tech, and woodworking. I also thought computer technology was a coming trend so I pursued a master’s degree with emphasis in teaching with technology. In those classes we learned how to teach students to use Apple IIE computers.

I earned my master’s degree in Education in 1989 and did everything but the student teaching requirement to be certified as a secondary teacher. I was scheduled to begin student teaching when life threw me another curve: I fell in love, and got married February 14, 1990.

This created a barrier to reaching my goal of becoming a teacher; only a fool quits a good-paying job to do free student teaching for half a year on a new marriage. I first had to learn how to share my life with another person. That challenge continues to this day–28 years later.

Pursuing a teaching career caused me to look at all of my life differently.

When dealing with other people I now attempted to make my interactions instructional. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn’t.

Meanwhile, my wife’s career in banking soared. When the time came, I revisited the idea of becoming a teacher, and my wife, Cathy, supported me in taking coursework required to teach K-8. I finished student teaching with host teacher, Todd Wicks’ fifth grade class, at Riverbend Elementary in Juneau, to become certified.

I was 52 years old. My newly certified peers in the profession were mostly kids half my age. I became the most requested substitute teacher in the Juneau School District and I loved teaching middle-school. That was the developmental stage in my own life when I had faced the most challenges. I’m still connected to some of those former kids through social media!

But in 2003 it was Cathy’s turn to shift gears. She had had enough of Juneau and told me she was moving to Anchorage with or without me!

As a teacher my options were different. I was now on a career path and I was qualified for a range of jobs. Public education in Alaska employs some 8,500 teachers and my first full-year teaching contract was to be an adventure.

Another curve-ball; a life-threatening heart attack at the end of 2003 disabled Cathy, but she didn’t qualify for Social Security disability insurance until 2006. I was applying for full time teaching jobs which would come with benefits. In the meantime, I was substitute teaching in the Anchorage School District and tutoring at Sylvan Learning Systems. Cathy managed our financial resources well.

One teacher application required interviewing over the telephone, answering questions from what on my end sounded like it could have been the entire community of Haines on the other end of the line. They interviewed 23 candidates for the job of teaching sixth grade. When the interview ended I told Cathy: “That was fun but I don’t believe they will be calling me back.”

But they did call back! The superintendent said I was the first choice of the community but there was a hitch—I had to be there and ready to teach in 11 days!

We were living in a 3600 ft. home in College Village. I didn’t see how we could do that, but Cathy said we could. Movers packed a 42-ft moving van that filled four single-car garage storage units in Haines. We drove 777 miles from the Costco gas station in Anchorage to the Haines gas station.

The lessons in classroom management I had learned from Mr. Wicks saved me in my first year as a teacher and I learned a lot that year about how public education really works in Alaska, too.

After spending the 2006-07 school year in Haines, Cathy’s doctors insisted that we remain closer to a full hospital for her health issues. Since returning to Anchorage I have done what I set out to do—to teach those who have given up on the public education system not to give up on their education.

This is what I had set out to do and it has taken me where I want to be.

Donn Liston has lived in Alaska since 1962 and in Eagle River since 2010. He was a reporter for the Anchorage Daily News during pipeline construction and is now a teacher after becoming certified in Juneau after living there 20 years. He has taught Adult Basic Education for the last 10 years. To reach Donn, email: donn@echoak.com.