Peter Tomasi III:  

Not sure where to start. For the last 15 years give or take I have worked in the computer industry as a Network Administrator. In 2003 my employment changed and I started working as a consultant. Then in 2007, I was out of work and spent most of the year trying get something going. I ran into an old friend who I had worked with in the late 80's at a Boy Scout camp. Well as it turns out he was working there again that summer and so I casually told him "If you know of anyone looking for a computer person to let me know, since I was looking", the next day I received a phone call asking if I would be interested in coming back to work at camp, I asked what I would be doing and he told me that I would be the Director of Outdoor Skills(formerly known as ScoutCraft) with a little hesitation I agreed and so begins a chain of events that has pretty much changed me forever. Now you may be asking how working with 11-17 year olds can change a person, let me explain. I think it was during week 2, I had a huge class for the Camping Merit badge and so I had to assign more written work than normal so that everyone would get a chance to complete the badge. Most of them did the work and those that didn't bother well we all know what happens then. But there is one scout in particular who was the last one in the area on the last day of class, I could see he was struggling so I sat opposite him and looked at what he had written(there were but three words on the page) So I asked "Is it that you didn't read the material? or that you just can't get it out of your brain?" Of course at that moment I am having a flashback to something that happened to me in college (1991) where I was asked the same thing. The young scout replies "I just can not write it down" so I asked if we talked about it would that help? Of course he says yes, and we finish all the stuff he needed in 10 minutes. I congratulate him on completing his camping merit badge and we all head off to lunch. I felt good having helped someone, but it doesn't end there. Later that day the scout comes to me and thanks me for taking the time to help him out, he said no one else in camp recognized that he was having trouble, we spoke for a while and he told me that he has a learning disability and he thanked me again. This was an event that changed me forever, previous to this I just looked at teaching the stuff as exactly that just teaching stuff. Afterword I started to look inward at the possibility that I was not in the career field that I should be in. Later after summer camp I decided to become a substitute teacher in my hometown. The process is quite intensive, you have to go for fingerprints, submit a transcript, interview, give them references that they actually check, I started the process in Sept and by late November was on the sub list. So now I am a sub in Hawthorne, and working as much as I can and realizing that I don't have any problems taking charge of a classroom. Though I will admit the first day was a little daunting, you just never realize what being on the other side of a teachers desk means until you actually do it. One day I start to thi...Expand for more