I rest beneath the Almighty’s shade, My griefs expire, my troubles cease; Thou, Lord, on Whom my soul has stayed, Wilt keep me still in perfect peace. – Charles Wesley
Probably the most difficult decision that I ever had to make was leaving teaching and coaching for a twenty-six-year career in business. I remember clearly the hours I spent in counsel with my wife, my friends, and most of all, my God. I spend long periods of time on my knees when I couldn’t sleep asking God for His guidance and direction.
The path that I had chosen in education was one for which I had trained in college. My bachelor’s and masters of education had been hard work. The first few years of teaching and coaching had been an up-and-down struggle, then slowly beginning to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Then in my fifth year, I began to see real success.
The journey ahead of me was completely unknown. I was offered a position for which I had no knowledge or experience. Early that spring, I needed to find summer employment to help with our yearly budgeted expenses. Since my teaching and coaching position did not quite cover all of our financial needs for the year, I found it necessary to subsidize my income. For the previous two summers I had worked at construction painting, but the continued sickness from the lead-based paint eliminated that option.
I answered an ad for a part-time selling position and had taken the training for that job. Even though my wife was not too excited about me selling, I found it to be enjoyable and was surprisingly successful finishing in the top sales position by the end of the summer. The company offered me a full-time position in sales management with an income base that was well above what I was making in teaching.
I was unsettled about the opportunity. I didn’t want to leave teaching and coaching even though the teaching element was becoming more difficult. School systems were in turmoil. The laws about discipline had been gradually changing in the 1960s, taking away the authority of the teacher in the classroom and opening the door to huge discipline problems. The few problem students were controlling the educational opportunities of the masses. The few time-tested, effective methods for controlling adversarial student behavior had been eliminated. However, nothing had been given to the teacher to replace them. The inmates were truly beginning to run the asylum.
On the other hand, this was my first summer in a new position and even though I had been successful, I had no training, education, or background in the management or leadership aspects of running a business. My new employers had assured me that I would receive training and be given the time to develop, but I was unsure that this was a direction I wanted to go. To complicate the decision, we had two small children, one three years old and the other only four months old. Added to that there was a young wife and a mortgage that had to be paid. This was quite a lot a responsibility for a twenty-eight-year-old young man.
(To Be Continued)
Fair, 68°