Joseph Center
LSAC#: **********
Personal Statement
My name is Joseph Center, and I was born to be a teacher. Call it self-awareness; call it revelation from God; call it dumb, indecisive, undergraduate luck—whatever; it worked: I am a teacher, and I am a good one. At home in a classroom, before a body of students, teaching, managing, learning; the grade book a well-lit place, and lesson prep a natural extension of my regular thoughts, preoccupations, and academic appetites; I am a teacher. Despite this there have been times when the working professional’s oldest devil, most effectually labeled “doubt,” has come after me, armed to the teeth with all my insecurities—future, money, education, fake-it-‘til-you-make-it, authority, maturity, etcetera—and all that stacked up against the true weight of a teacher’s responsibility. He is a nasty beast, Doubt, but I was always able to shake him, at least until the great bureaucracy of public education, wittingly or no, came powerfully to his aid against me—a grim encounter, the result of which taught me more about myself and my abilities than any of the previous seven years’ experience.
At the time I was enjoying what I can comfortably call success in a smallish school for smart and artistic kids in the crook of Michigan’s thumb. I had a full course load up and running, trips and guest speakers planned, fundraisers underway, and, best of all, a motley of talented students, willing and un-, already deep in the year’s most challenging material. I loved my job, my students, and so they seemed to love me, too. My third year had started peacefully. Better yet, I felt the stride of the backstretch opening up now that I had two good years behind me. I was comfortable. All was well. Little did I expect an over-large foot was about to stamp my breaks from the passenger seat.
It happened one Friday morning in October. As always, I arrived at school shortly after six and checked my box. I’d received a letter from the State Office of Education. I opened it as I walked to my room. I unlocked the door and sat at my desk. I read the letter, which informed me that I had failed to take one of the two required certification tests needed to transfer my teaching license from Utah to Michigan and, until I took it, would be removed from the public classroom.
“Holy crap,” I said aloud and to absolutely no one.
My eyes bugged out, I slumped over a pile of ungraded poetry, and hardly moved until classes started. I took Monday off to drive to Lansing, because no one at the state office would return the dozens of phone calls between classes, during lunch, and whenever I could manage it throughout the day Friday. I arrived shortly after opening, slogged through the mire of red tape, got planted in a conference room and told to wait. Nearly an hour passed before a little mustachioed man finally entered. He had five pieces of information, four of which he checked off a list on his clipboard. None were helpful:
One: The next proctoring of the required test would be held in three months. (This, while frustrating, rankled less than learning that the most recent test had been given only two days earlier, which was the Saturday after I received the letter, which, of course, I would have been able to take, had I known about it, which information I could have gained if, and only if, someone—anyone—at the State Office had bothered to answer their phone on Friday.)
Two: My valid Utah teacher’s license (not to mention my previous seven years’ experience and my recently acquired and accepted-by-the-state master’s degree in education, much less the recommendation from faculty, students, parents, and community—I even had a Crystal Apple, after all) made no difference in the matter, nor did the fact that the piece of paper I received from the State upon my hire made no reference to the test I missed, but only the one test which I took, nor that I was told repeatedly upon my redundant inquiries during that first year that there was nothing left for me to do after taking that first and purportedly only test.
Three: The matter was black and white, and the State was not responsible for my lack of information, even though they were the source of the very misinformation that brought about the entire problem.
Four (not on his checklist): Even if I had recorded the names of those individuals who had so incorrectly confirmed my completion of all application measures and steps, it would make no difference, and those mistaken individuals would yet hold their employ at the State.
Five: The case was closed until I completed the test, and the gavel sounded: bang; its noise falling dead in the ill-lit, padded room, like a giant period.
The man left. I remained a moment, stunned. I got lost attempting to exit the building.
I drove straight back to school and sat with my principal. Thankfully, she was kind and helpful, as well as a seasoned veteran of the bureaucratic battlefront. She wielded her telephone like a shotgun. Her targets, quite unlike mine, actually listened to her, and, lo and behold, were even helpful. She didn’t call the State Office of Education.
I returned to my classroom to relieve my substitute teacher.
Any understanding gained from this moment through the weeks that followed came from two primary sources: my supporters and myself, the former of which, as it transpired, was a font whose depth I could never have guessed.
Supporters first:
Thankfully, I wasn’t out of the classroom yet. There was a grace period, as it turned out, so the school could find a suitable replacement for their endangered teacher. Word spread quickly that the potential end of my position was imminent, and the support flooded in. From students, parents, and community came personal notes and cards, copies of letters to State representatives, reports of circulating petitions vouching for my quality, and even dedicatory poetry; from fellow faculty members came listening ears, wisdom, and regret. A day or two passed, and I was suddenly whisked from my classroom for an emergency school board meeting at the district office. The entire board was there. My principal sat next to me, my union rep, too, and there, directly across from me, was the assistant superintendent over students and faculty. Their support was total. “We’re not going to lose you,” said the super.
A plan was put in place against the powers of the State in order to, first, keep me in the classroom without disruption; two, place hold my position so it couldn’t be filled by some other full-time teacher seeking in-district transfer; three, provide me with at least some measured income against my loss. As bolster to and evidence of her support, my principal actually offered to make up the balance of my lost salary just to prevent me from having to go elsewhere for employment. (I humbly declined her staggering generosity, my parents having already agreed to help take care of my family.)
It is amazing and ironic that something that can make a body feel so crappy can simultaneously make him feel so good, and yet be nothing but utterly humbling.
My learning that I was loved and appreciated, that people of authority recognized me as an excellent teacher, however, were not the biggest of the revelations.
The biggest revelation came from me.
I came to teaching an idealist. I could no longer afford to maintain that kind of extravagance. The whole reason we moved to Michigan from Utah in the first place (better teacher pay, cheaper cost of living) was a determination to keep my wife at home with our children, where we felt she was most needed and effectual. We would make the necessary accommodations of lifestyle, and our kids would have their mother (and forever will—a decision as black and white as the gavel-pounding conclusion of the little man at the State Office); this foundation of family was now in jeopardy. Its maintenance had been one of my greatest sources of personal pride.
My biggest realization, hands down, was that I was entirely less worried and freaked out about not teaching than I was about my newly arrived inability to support my family. Idealism, in the form of being a happy, make-a-difference teacher, had become fallacious frivolity; idealism, in the form of keeping my family emotionally, spiritually, and financially secure, rose to the exospheric top.
But I don’t want to be a lawyer just for the money. The object of my decision to change careers came a lot like that of becoming a teacher. First—and here comes my implacable idealism again—it just felt—and yet feels—right; and while such impressions are important to me, there has to be a level of pragmatism to them. Once upon a time I said that money wasn’t important, that making a difference was. While money is more important than it ever has been, so still is the need to make a difference, but less so for those around me than for my family. I need to do something I enjoy and that I’m good at. I need to work in a challenging atmosphere. I need to contribute to something—a person, a school, a firm, a community, the world; something! My greatest gifts are in the realms of words, public speaking, and performing. All three, I believe, apply directly to a study and pursuit of law. This is what I need to do.
