Children who didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer made me a teacher

Many teachers feel a deep calling from within, knowing that they were born to be in front of a class. My case was different.

When my future students found me in the town square in Sayulita, Mexico I must have looked out of place among the artisans selling handmade macramé and silver jewelry, pipes, and tie-dyed beach wear. There I sat next to my blanket covered with small colorfully-glazed ceramic animals I’d made before moving to their small town.

Sayulita, Mexico now, thanks to the Denver Post

When my future students found me in the town square in Sayulita, Mexico I must have looked out of place among the artisans selling handmade macramé and silver jewelry, pipes, and tie-dyed beach wear.

Tourists visiting the beach town hardly looked twice at my little rabbits, cats and sea turtles, yet they were a magnet for local children. Eyes shining with awe, they crowded around my blanket each evening interrogating me about the little creatures and their creation. Parents and siblings, dragged over for a look, asked still more questions.

My intention in leaving the States a few months before was to dedicate myself to creating art and writing in a place where life moved at a slower pace with less overhead. Never had I considered teaching. So when the kids began to insist that I teach them how to make little animals, I wasn’t that open. I’d resisted teaching before. As an undergraduate in art, I’d been strongly advised to do a teaching certificate. It would’ve been a smart move, I knew. But something held me back. Perhaps it was my concept of teaching as a formal occupation where one must be a complete expert to earn the students’ respect. Or maybe it was that I didn’t want to be pinned down to something so structured. Never had I imagined myself in front of a classroom of students.

Now years later in Mexico, along with my personal reservations, I faced some very concrete obstacles to giving these children a ceramics class. Among them were not having a classroom, materials nor a kiln — add to that my lack of teaching experience. Yet as time went on, it was the very impossible-ness of the situation that began to hook me. There was something in…