In my last post, I wrote about my refusal to proctor the standardized PARCC tests, which I equated to free falling. Here I’d like to talk about how I landed that fall. It was not at all through any special powers or skills of my own. I don’t have super cliff-jumping capabilities. People have told me I was courageous, but truthfully, it wasn’t courage; it was faith. For all the fear that was at the surface, I never thought that fall would end in a crash, not really. I trusted that I would be caught somehow. I fully believe that when we step out in faith and do what we know to be the right thing, we will be caught before we meet the ground. When I made that decision to leap, I didn’t have time to create a plan B, nor did I have the resources. What I did have was an opportunity — one rare shot — to say that something is seriously wrong, and we don’t have to pretend that it isn’t. Had I waited for a plan B to materialize, my opportunity would have passed. Some people thought it was crazy, and I guess it was. I’m a single mother with a mortgage and no other credentials or experiences other than teaching. On top of this, even my union lawyer was telling me that he couldn’t protect me, and I was throwing away my entire career. Yet, as I fell nearer to that fate, and the ground came into clear view, a miraculous thing happened.

One evening as my fear got the best of me, I shared my story on a parent Opt-out Facebook group. At that point I was feeling lost and didn’t know what I could do to make a living, if not teaching. I was a bit frantic for others’ guidance, and people came through for me in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I received over 100 responses, but one caught my attention more than any other. Heidi Wilenius, a parent of a teen attending Princeton Learning Cooperative, told me that they were hiring a new staff member – and the application was due the next day. I perused the site, read the job description and knew that THIS. Was. The. Job. I couldn’t believe that a place like this existed. It was as if everything I had imagined education could be, should be, was manifested in reality. I felt a little bit like my brain had been hijacked. And the truly amazing part was that I hadn’t looked for this job. It found me. I submitted the application, went on an interview, and then I waited. And waited. After about a month, when I was starting to doubt again, my principal asked me to sign paperwork acknowledging that if I continued to refuse to proctor future PARCC tests, which was my clear intention, I would lose my job. I signed. Another act of faith. Later that same day, Joel called to tell me that I got the position at Princeton Learning Cooperative. I literally danced in my living room. It felt wonderful to feel the ground beneath my feet again.

The point I want to make here is that things really do work out when you follow what you know to be right and true. I feel that too often we make decisions and choose paths out of fear of the unknown. However, just because the end of a path is unclear, this does not mean that it is the wrong way. I’ve personally found the clearest, safest routes to be incredibly limiting and frankly, disappointing. Conversely, unknown paths take us where our current reality ends and our imagination begins. Martin Luther King Jr. urged us, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” We don’t have to know how it will work out. We just need a little more faith that it WILL.