On Becoming A Fifth-Grade Teacher: A Television Journalist Does a Mid-Life Crisis

The decision to become a teacher and join the Willamette MAT program did not come easily or quickly. Especially after twenty years in another field, one I loved. But it is absolutely the right one, of that I am certain. 
       
How did I get here? I'm still trying to figure that one out... I grew up in a small, sandy-floored beach town in Southern California called Newport Beach. I have six siblings, and through the years, we are as juvenile as ever when we get together.  My elementary school was one of only two in the nation actually on the beach. To this day, I associate sounding out my first letters to the sounds of seagulls, waves and the smell of salt air. I have been a reading fanatic every since.

         

I have always had a fierce hunger to explore new places and after high school, I moved to Sun Valley, Idaho, to ski bum. Forget college, I quickly decided. Who needed it? Then I got a reporter job on a local paper and discovered photography. I left Idaho to get a journalism degree at the University of Arizona in Tucson, then went on to the acclaimed Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles to become a commercial photographer. 

        
My three years at Art Center was the most difficult thing I had ever faced. Grueling hours in studios and darkrooms, learning everything possible about composition, lighting and the creative execution of ideas. This was a professional program, and unlike my past experiences in school, they weren't fooling around. But the biggest surprise of all was how much I loved the material, as well as the challenge. Art Center taught me not only how to really see, but also to fully commit to hard work and not be afraid of criticism. Just as important, I learned how to treat my art and talent as a professional which has taken me far in my career.

Nevertheless, after all that advertising photography, I missed the rawness of street journalism and decided my heart was in television documentary work. On the strength of my Art Center portfolio, I was hired by a tiny TV station in Grand Junction, Colorado, and just a few months later got a job shooting news back in Tucson. Three years later, I jumped to one of the best documentary stations in the nation at that time, WBZ-TV in Boston. 

In Boston, I became known as someone who worked well with kids. Because of that, I worked on projects with underprivileged children of all races, ages and economic levels. Along the way, I had my white-girl-from-Newport-Beach eyes opened to some extremely difficult realities, including a tragic show on the kids at Boston's Children's Hospital. 

       
Two years later, I moved to Seattle where I freelanced for twelve years as a videographer, producer and editor for a wide range of both local and national clients. These included all three local affiliates, Sixty Minutes, Microsoft, the Today Show, Swedish Hospital, McNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, along with dozens of other shows produced through the local PBS affiliate, KCTS. 

         
It was through KCTS that I fell into my most life-changing television project. I became one of three Directors of Photography for Bill Nye the Science Guy, a groundbreaking Disney/PBS children's science show that was breaking every educational television rule out there - and winning every National Emmy in the book. In fact, I received my own national Emmy nomination as a Director of Photography with the show. But best of all, the kids loved it. Wierd, nerdy science teacher Bill  became a superstar! 

       
 I was a single-parent with a two-year old child at that time, and I began to look at educating children in an entirely different way. It didn't have to be boring, I realized. In fact, children could learn very complex concepts if you only knew how to reach them in stimulating, creative ways. 

         
Raising a child took me back into my own childhood, and at 35, I began to relive and re-frame many of my own experiences growing up in a loving, but very rambunctious Irish Catholic family of seven children. As a working single mother, I read every book I could lay my hands on to meet the challenges of parenting. But still I wondered, how did my mother raise seven children and stay sane?

        
When my daughter, Sophia, left her preschool to start kindergarten, her young teacher wrote me a note I have never forgotten. She said that Sophie was one of the most remarkable children she had ever met. Then she told me why. One day she found Sophie standing in front of a mirror, staring at herself in the way preschoolers often do. When the teacher asked her what she was thinking, Sophie said, "I am wondering what it would be like to take my eyeballs out so that I could turn them around and put them back in to see what the back of my head looks like." Wow, I thought. Wow.
That story stayed with me. As a photographer, I kept wondering what it would be like to see the world through a child's eyes.
        
When Sophie reached third-grade, I devised a project with her entire third grade class to explore the idea of how children see the world. Her open-minded teacher loved the idea and I dove in. I began with a series of mini-lectures on how to make interesting images. Find interesting angles, I told them. Climb a tree. Get under the table. Get close. In your dog's face. And above all, learn to see light. Study it. And take chances - make lots of mistakes. Many won't work but maybe two, or even just one, would be totally cool. And perfect. 
        
Next, we handed every child a disposable camera with the assignment, show me a feeling. Show me what Lonely looked like. Peaceful. Mysterious. And save room for some Just Plain Cools. Finally, I told them, "This is your vision, not mine. There can be no wrong. Just make it interesting."
 
The work they brought back was nothing short of astonishing. I enlarged the prints, matted them, and one night at school, hung the show for our "gallery opening." No one was more taken aback then the parents. They expected little kid snapshots. Instead, they walked straight into a wall of images that looked straight out of a New York gallery. Up front, in your face, full of emotion, insight, loneliness, awareness - and beauty. Years later, parents would stop me on the street to tell me that the project was their child's favorite from all their elementary years. I was moved.
        
I have now run the project, which I call "True Colors", three times in three states. Each time the results are remarkable. The insights of the children stuns everyone - from teachers and parents, to school administrators - but best of all, the children LOVE it. And slowly, I began to visualize this idea of making my living doing what I loved to do for free - teach kids.
      
Four years ago, I was offered a reporting job in Nashville, Tennessee, where I could choose, shoot, edit and report my own feature segments. I jumped at the idea. It was first time to actually be the face fronting my own segments, and I was terrified but thrilled. I have always fought terrible stage fright but I was ready to finally face down those demons. 

      
I loved the South. It was the only corner of the country I had not lived in, and it was a fabulous cultural education for both myself and my two girls, now 10 and 16. But when management changed in late 2006, my contract was bought out, and again, I was left wondering what to do next.

        
Then God stepped in. A good friend, musician Gene Cotton, had been after me to teach a video production course at a local summer arts academy that he and some well-known musician friends including Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers, had founded a dozen years before. Since I finally had the time, I agreed. Little did I know the tidal wave of change it would set in motion in my life. 

        
The Kids On Stage program was created to address terrible local school performance issues. The lovely, tiny community of Leiper's Fork, Tennessee, had attracted a very caring and creative group of local residents, and they pondered how to address the school issue. Only thirty miles from Nashville, the group decided to implement a music program in the school that was aimed at the kind of music kids love to play - mostly, rock and roll. They gathered up donations of guitars, keyboards, and top-of-the-line sound recording equipment, and created - in this little country school - a stunning Nashville-level music recording studio and program where every child learned to play and record music. In only a few years, the school scores skyrocketed.
        
Now, every June some of the top musicians and music producers from Music Row in Nashville, people like Michael McDonald and Vince Gill, take time out of their busy road tours to come and play, and teach kids from all economic and skill levels. Things like, how to play electric guitar, bass, sing, song-write, performance skills, roadie skills - you name it. And even, learn video journalism. With me.
       
 I am not sure what part of Kids On Stage I fell more in love with - the beauty of pride and wonder on my kids' faces when I help them shoot something wonderful, or the hearts of the teachers who truly love these kids and are thrilled to help them succeed. What I learned at Kids On Stage was that these were the kinds of people that I wanted to be around. People who cared about the welfare, education and the creative souls of these children. People who were willing to put their free time where their hearts were - teaching kids.
        
My friends at the Bill Nye show, and then more recently at Kids on Stage, have taught me that kids can learn amazing skills and talents - and have a blast doing it! - if only caring people take the time to teach them in creative ways. So that is my goal: to make my classes creative, adventurous, wild, fun, serious, wide-ranging and a place of wonder. I want to teach my kids the joys of learning through books, photography, video production, and real-life experience. 

      
I will have high expectations of them, and in turn, I will give them my absolute best and learn how to improve my teaching skills from them. Because, after all, teaching should be a two-way street. I feel incredibly honored to be part of Willamette's MAT program. Teaching is a huge responsibility and challenge, but I am prepared to give my kids every thing I have gathered from my many life experiences to help them move out into the world better equipped and excited to learn.


This opportunity is the result of reaching, in Robert Frost's famous words, a diversion of two paths, and I am choosing this path in the undergrowth, "because it was grassy and wanted wear. (1919)" 

 You can see a video I created with my class about Kids On Stage program at: 
http://www.morantv.com/KidsOnStage.html

(You can see a video I put together that showcases the Tennessee True Colors photography project at:
http://www.morantv.com  (Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page.)