This is a brag on Chris (anyone who doesn't know - that's the husband of Ruth my younger daughter. Like my husband Bob, Chris is a teacher by vocation (in the old fashioned sense of the word vocation). He is doing the work of his heart and came to it despite his parents' hopes and expectations that he enter a more lucrative field like engineering. He taught high school social studies two years in little south Texas town, took to the different culture and the classroom like the natural empath and teacher he is. He learned about living situations without running water and captured the hearts and imaginations of kids who were longing for more intellectual challenges and those who fought being challenged at all. He brought them fencing, beefed up their debate team, drove hem to political rallies to see John Edwards and Barack OBama, played practical jokes on them and taught them to clean up after the jokes they played on him and on each other. He laughed and cried with and over them - loved and was loved.



When it came time that he and Ruth decided to move their lives back into her studio and their house, Chris looked hard for jobs in every conceivable Austin, Round Rock, Lender, Plfugerville, Del Valle high school and middle school that had a remotely appropriate opening- public and private. And I know he was anxious waiting to get interviewed and hired.



He is hired now, to teach social studies at Reagan, a traditionally tough high school here in Austin with some great innovative programs. He should be able to teach the same kids for four years with the "looping" Reagan is trying. He also got offered a job in Del Valle at an alternative middle school - so impressed the interviewers at a different Del Valle middle school which couldn't hire him because it needed a coach - that it's principal called around until he found school with a need and suggested they hire Chris, which they offered to do after he had accepted the job at Reagan. He also turned down promising interviews at two suburban schools after accepting the Reagan job.



I'm proud of Chris for persevering in his training and in his job hunt. I'm impressed with him as a teacher and a man. Go Chris!