Baldridge—Teaching:
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Those Who Can’t (any more) teach
I’ve found teaching incredibly challenging and surprisingly rewarding, but I might never have tried it if the global economy hand’t collapsed!
It was Chicago, 2008: I arrived at work one day in what was then the world’s largest independent pharmaceutical ad agency, AbelsonTaylor. This gig does not appear on my resume, as I never completed a job for them!
Because that day, as producer on a massive, interactive site, shilling for some new antacid, I found that the others at my level on the project —Client Rep and Art Director— were no longer with the company. I wondered how long it would be before I’d follow them.
The week I applied for unemployment was one for the record books, with a greater percentage of unemployed Americans than at any time since the Great Depression. Welcome to the burst of the “housing bubble”…
High-end interactive marketing had no established ROI. Money for such projects dried, instantly, up.
And, rather than go into making banner ads —the design bane of the Net in those days— I took a trip to Australia, to compose for and appear (as a faun) in a production of The Bacchae, helmed by my old friend Skye Evans.
I drank, appropriately, too much wine and, on my return to the states, started looking for teaching gigs, just to see if I’d be any good at it.
I’d always thought I might become a college professor in my retirement… The call just came a little earlier than anticipated.
A couple semesters spent with the Art Institute of Illinois would have turned me off the prospect forever, except for a single data point:
In student evals, I scored well above the institutional average.
I thought then that, beyond any sense I’d had of my own poor ability, I might be onto something.
Tecnológico de Monterrey, the Yale of Mexico
Former Vice President Al Gore had just, rather absurdly, dubbed El Tec “The Yale of Mexico” (it’s much more that country’s SUNY system, a loose confederation of quite different schools) so I gladly accepted an offer to spend 2013 teaching interactive multimedia in Guadalajara, and the subsequent offer to do the same at the flagship campus in Monterrey. There I created what may well have been the first college course in VR specifically targeting Google Cardboard, released in 2014.
And it was there I was first a “professor”: de Ambinetes Virtuales. It felt good.
I found myself very comfortable as an expat, having always considered myself a citizen of the world. Friends I made, relationships established with persons from around the globe, convinced me that the time had come to see more of the old place. My passport became my… passport —to a wider, more interesting life.
It was only later that I realized teaching had very possibly saved me: Advertising, interactive marketing had been 60 grueling, in-office hours per week, minimum. Most of it spent sitting before a computer. Abroad, I grew healthier, happier, more relaxed. I found time to make art, music and lasting friendships.
I discovered the joy of opening new worlds to young minds.
Korea (the Good One) and the East
Next I spent two full years, entirely in the Eastern Hemisphere. Living in S. Korea, I traveled in Australia and Japan. Tho I never set foot in it (visas, at that time, were made out for seven years, min —rather expensive for the visit of less than a month) I nevertheless felt the deep, gravitational pull of China. Many people I worked with at SOL International School went on to speak fluent Mandarin. I may yet wind up there. We all may!
This was the “Little Rocket Man” era of U.S. / N. Korean relations and among the global expatria clustered around Seoul the conversation turned to bug-out plans for when the (ironically) inevitable arrived.
I said I’d get out on the roof of my building with the kimchi pots and watch the bombs come down: “Cause I never seen nothin like that!”
And then what? Friends wanted to know. I assured them I reckoned the next thing I’d do was die.
But it was during a dry run, national emergency drill, that I learned what Koreans thought of it all. While many of my peers huddled, joking, in the shelters, I was up on that roof, watching a guy sweep the sidewalk in front of his shop in the streets below.
When all the sirens went off at once, all over the city (the whole of the lower peninsula, geopolitical island —no land route departs S. Korea) he didn’t miss a beat, kept right on sweeping.
Barring the accidents to which all flesh is heir, I imagine he’s there still, sweeping away.
An American administrator had suggested: Don’t try to change Korea. Let Korea change you.
And I guess it was at that time of my life I learned not to rise to the rhetoric of political hucksters. The world is always ending, we’re always doomed. Keep sweeping.
In Korea, as in Mexico, I landed a grab-bag of courses. Anything within my range, or that the job demanded. Along with screenplay and play writing, I taught interactive narrative, media and media history courses. A little coding and lots of, what I call, Photoshop/Illustrator —into which I gratuitously throw some After Effects, just for the animation.
I’ve taught this introductory digital design course essentially every semester of my career —in three countries, on two continents. I could do it in my sleep —exactly the point at which I’d like to leave it to others: bored teachers are boring teachers. It’s the creative explosion such tools elicit in some students, keeps me alive to the course.
SUNY Polytechnic and Game Design
Back in the states, all this gelled into Game Design. I’d been circling it for years so, no surprise. A two-year contract, I knew from the first I’d never apply for renewal.
I was looking for a home, not a job, and one for which I had to periodically reapply. I figured this meant something like tenure track.
It was kind of unfortunate, then, that I fell so in love with Little Falls, New York —a city of supposedly 5,000 souls, where I lived across from the cemetery. I still count myself a Little Fallan.
I might have stayed there forever. The house I rented was for sale the entire time, and easily within my budget! Except for the recurring hat-in-hand, professionally (and an enormous shifting in the field, still to come) I might be there yet, contentedly commuting the 45 minutes to Utica in that beat up old van, all weathers.
Future so Bright I got to wear shades
My superiors made it clear they’d welcome’d my continuance at SUNY Polytechnic, but I was adamant in seeking roots. Only it turned out I’d be seeking them during Covid.
Many advertised positions were withdrawn. I began to believe I might be sitting out a semester, maybe a whole year. I felt, for the first time, dissatisfied with teaching as a profession.
The whole “online” thing worked ok for writing courses but was never a great fit for screen-based arts. I’m sharing my screen with students —taking up their screen, the one they need to do the work on…
No, the whole setup required at least on more screen than any student had. A medium investment which could have come out of tuition fees. I mean, honestly, no in-person program was really offering what’d been paid for.
If people (parents & students both) doubt the monetary value of education, experiences like that do nothing to assure them.
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Like this charming bit of student work, I must keep something priceless and fragile always in the air… or else, let it fall, shattering, to earth.