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Your Kids Don’t Need a ‘Backup Plan’
Please Don’t Tell Them to Have Something to Fall Back On
I had two part-time jobs for a quite some time, but they were two important part-time jobs. I taught mornings at a university (English 101 and 102), then I’d walk several blocks across the city to teach Creative Nonfiction at a high school for the creative and performing arts. I really enjoyed those teaching years. At the university, I engaged with students from many backgrounds, pursuing lots of different majors, setting off for the first time without parental supervision. At the high school, I taught ninth through twelfth graders how to construct and frame the stories of their lives into something beautiful, often charming or sad, but always true.
The biggest disparity in the two teaching jobs was this: the students at the high school were still being encouraged to pursue their dream to become writers. They were surrounded by other high school students learning to be dancers, actors, painters, sculptors, oboists, drummers, pianists, and more. No one had told them the couldn’t do all of those things and more. By the time I got a similar set of students at the university, though, they had been cautioned to have a “backup plan,” something to “fall back on” because not everyone gets to be their first choice.
