The Decision

It was thirteen years ago today - July 5, 1999 - when I made The Decision ... to take my talents to South Fork.

LeBron James' one-hour televised narcissistic announcement - which, after months of planning and contemplation - led to him earning a bazillion dollars, a bazillion Miami-area fans, a bazillion Cleveland-area death threats, and one (so far) National Basketball Association championship ring.

My choice resulted in none of these.

The Decision was made with surprisingly minimal advanced planning. I say "surprisingly" because the year before it took me something like a month to decide which computer to get (a Gateway), yet seemingly less such analysis took place before I partook in the entire "get a job 1,200 miles out of state, and all that goes along with it" lifestyle change.

Flash back a couple of months. For the 1998-99 school year, I was blessed with the opportunity to do my student teaching at The International Academy, an all-International Baccalaureate magnet-type high school in Bloomfield Hills. My student teaching was officially limited to the first semester; I was a paid graduate assistant the second semester, where I continued working with my cooperative teacher (Mary Wermuth) and teaching 11th grade English, as well as serving as a faculty advisor for the school newsletter, Future Problem Solvers, and literary magazine. There was even an opportunity to teach full-time at the IA starting in the fall of 1999, but the job opening went to a more experienced instructor, and the realization set in that my teaching future was elsewhere.

Thus began the Great Job Search.

I can't remember all the suburban Detroit districts and schools where I sat across from administrators and Language Arts department heads, answering questions, presenting my portfolio, discussing lesson and unit ideas. There were at least two dozen. And each time, I ended up receiving a rejection letter. Livonia. Rochester. Mount Clemens. Clarkston. West Bloomfield. Birmingham. Lake Orion. Even Bloomfield Hills, where I had been employed for four years as the assistant manager of its educational radio station, WBFH-FM. Shot down in flames, a large 0-for-Michigan.

Whilst tooling around metro Detroit and interviewing for jobs, I kept my options open. Perhaps there were opportunities in Lansing, Grand Rapids, Saginaw, Battle Creek, Mt. Pleasant. I kept my eyes and ears open.

Around this time, we had a family function in St. Petersburg, Florida, where my cousin Karen and her husband Emad were having a celebration to renew their wedding vows. I can't recall how, exactly, but I discovered taking place the same weekend - a mere 10 minutes away from the family function - was a job fair called the "Great Florida Teach-In" ... and I decided, what the heck, since I was going to be in the area, anyway ...

So while the rest of the family flew down to the Tampa area, I opted to drive down and make the occasion a job search opportunity as well.

At the job fair, I did a number of short interviews - "meet-and-greet" is probably a better description - which led to four more detailed sit-down discussions. Pahokee offered me employment as an English and yearbook teacher, but I felt its location (on the shore of Lake Okeechobee; basically, a long ways from any form of metropolitan life, as far as I could tell) did not make it a good fit. I was intrigued by an offer from a school in the Florida Keys, but - again - location was a concern. I was excited about an IB teaching position at Osceola High School in the Orlando area, but was not offered the job. An administrator at the school did say he believed there was an IB opening in Martin County, about 45 minutes north of West Palm Beach, and gave me the contact information for the Martin County High School principal, Joan Hunt.

I called Ms. Hunt from my car while sitting in the Osceola parking lot; she passed me along to her counterpart at South Fork High School, Dan Noel, where there was an IB English opening. We set up an interview for late morning on July 5.

So there I was, underneath the burning Florida sun, having pulled up to the school wearing my suit; and then drove up Mr. Noel, wearing a white polo shirt and bright red shorts.

Yeah ... to say I was overdressed would be an understatement.

We went inside his office and discussed (among other things) the teaching position, my experiences in Detroit, and his recent injury (having stepped on a conch two days before). He gave me a guided tour of the sprawling campus on a golf cart (cool factoid: South Fork, located in Stuart, is the only high school in the U.S. to have a golf course on campus, which is used to teach golfing and turf management), and asked me a few times, in reference to my attire, "You sure you're OK?" I, of course, said, "Yes I am!", which was as blatant a lie as I could come up with at the time. And no, I don't think he believed me for some reason.

After several hours of discussion - including the possibility of doing the PA announcing at Bulldog football games (yay, broadcasting background!) - I was offered the IB English position. I asked if I could think about it and get back with him; he said yes.

While driving north toward Michigan, I called Mary Wermuth and talked with her about the job opportunity at length. By the time I hit the Florida-Georgia border, I had accepted the position. And I was excited beyond words!

The next four weeks were busy. I had to return to Florida to find a place to live. I had to pack up my furnished two-bedroom apartment. I had to get a land line (back when those kinds of things were important), hire movers, donate tons of stuff to The Salvation Army, and catch up on the summer reading material both the senior and junior IB classes had been assigned (lots of Russian Literature). And, oh yeah, I had to move to a new home, some 1,200 miles south of Detroit.

It was not an easy transition. My going-away party (which was in small part an excuse to clean out the freezer and refrigerator) was filled with laughter, gifts, and plenty of tears. After the movers packed everything up, I visited my mom and stepfather, where a few more tears were shed. I stayed that night at the Cleveland residence of my friend Naomi Katzman, then drove south for two days, continually asking myself, "What the fuck am I doing?"

I still ponder that question at times.

I won't go into all the events and details the past 13 years have offered. Suffice to say, there have been numerous highs and numerous lows, both personally and professionally. I've been homesick and sick of administration. I've since interviewed for jobs at a number of other schools in Colorado, Michigan and various locations in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, switched employers in 2002, and switched residences four times.

It's nearly 5,000 days since I accepted the opportunity to work in, and move to, Florida, and for some reason I'm still here. I guess the positives have outweighed the negatives in the grand scheme of things.

I stand by my decision.