{"id":7696,"date":"2012-08-29T15:10:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-29T15:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7696"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:56","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:56","slug":"hauser-teachers-career-move-inspired-by-church-missions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7696","title":{"rendered":"Hauser Teacher’s Career Move Inspired by Church Missions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

THAT was the headline for my article this past Monday as it appeared on the “Classrooms” page in the local newspaper!\u00a0 I think it’s the best headline they’ve given me yet.\u00a0 (I’ve complained about their headline choices in the past – they tend to be … uninspired.)\u00a0 In all the last minute to-do lists before leaving home to drive to Florida, I almost forgot to post the article – so I include it below.\u00a0 Yesterday I drove 800 miles to Newberry, Florida to catch up with an old friend, Lance, and to meet his family.\u00a0 I met Lance years ago in Saudi Arabia, of all places, and his parents hosted me the first night I arrived in Saudi.\u00a0 How good it is to see him now “all grown up” and enjoying his own family.\u00a0 He and his wife have a very smiley little girl who was just delightful AND I even had the chance to say Hi to Lance’s mom, who is living close by.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Lance, Leslie and Lydia.\u00a0 What a happy baby!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

This morning I am enjoying a cup of coffee and some internet time because I only have a couple of hours to finish my drive to the airport in Fort Pierce to unload my freight\u00a0in anticipation of\u00a0tomorrow’s flight.\u00a0 I have to point out that yesterday I drove 800 miles in about 12 hours and 15 minutes.\u00a0 I stopped for THREE bathroom breaks – at JUST THREE MINUTES APIECE –\u00a0plus TWO\u00a0gas stops for about ten minutes each.\u00a0 The short duration of those stops was the only\u00a0time\u00a0I was not already missing my family!\u00a0 ;-)Here’s the article:<\/p>\n\n\n

On a quiet Saturday afternoon a\nmonth ago, I carried the last of my boxes from my classroom, left my keys on\nthe office counter and slipped out the front door.\u00a0 I felt gratitude, fear, joy, sadness, and\nthen fear again.<\/p>\n\n\n

It is scary to drop a perfectly\ngood job in this economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

I did not quit out of\ndissatisfaction with my school.\u00a0 I had\nfive meaningful and happy years at Hauser and I will always be thankful for the\nstaff, administration and students, and my time as part of the Hope community.<\/p>\n\n\n

And I did not get offered a higher\npaying job.\u00a0 Quite the opposite.\u00a0 For nearly two years now, motivated by a\ncouple of short term church mission trips, my wife and I have been working\ntoward relocating our family to Haiti where we will be once again teaching, but\nin very different circumstances.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

More than once this past school year,\nI had students question my plan to work in Haiti.\u00a0 More than one perplexed teen asked, \u201cDo they\npay teachers more in Haiti?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

Not so much.\u00a0 According to Laurence Wolff, an education\nconsultant working with the Inter-American Development Bank, in 2004 the\naverage Haitian public school teacher made $900 annually while their private\nschool counterparts made even less at $300 to $450. Keep in mind, those figures\nare yearly<\/i> sums.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

My wife will teach kindergarten and\nI will teach high school English at a mission school in Vaudreil, Haiti just\noutside of the second largest city, Cap Haitien.\u00a0 And, in a sense, we will be making even less\nthan the average Haitian teacher: we actually must raise our own salaries to\nenable our move there.\u00a0 (In fact, raising\nthe funds to get us to Haiti is my current full time job.)<\/p>\n\n\n

And even though my salary is not\ncomplete yet and we can\u2019t hope to have the family settled in Haiti until after\nChristmas, my first day as a teacher at Cowman International School will begin\nin one week, God willing.\u00a0 You see,\nCowman has need of an English teacher this semester and nobody to fill the\nrole.\u00a0 So I will be flying solo to be on\nsite for the first two weeks of school, to meet students and assess reading and\nwriting skills, and then teach English on-line from here in Columbus the\nremainder of the semester.\u00a0 It should be\na grand experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n

With the cost of flying freight to\nthe island at $1.50 per pound, those boxes cleared from my Hauser classroom\nwill be left behind in the garage.\u00a0 My\nclassroom, for now, will be largely \u201cvirtual\u201d anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THAT was the headline for my article this past Monday as it appeared on the “Classrooms” page in the local newspaper!\u00a0 I think it’s the best headline they’ve given me yet.\u00a0 (I’ve complained about their headline choices in the past – they tend to be … uninspired.)\u00a0 In all the last minute to-do lists before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7698,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7696\/revisions\/7698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}