MATANGI RAJAMANI

Kenney Middle School Math Teacher

“I haven't made any sacrifices. I really haven't. I'm a very selfish person. This is something people don't know about me but I'm a very selfish person. I think every major life changing decision has been for me. The decision to do my Masters was so that I could leave home because, well, I had to leave home. I wanted to be independent. And then how I decided that I was going to stay home was after I had my first son and he was two, three months old. And I remember walking into Prodigy Childcare, and I just immediately wanted to start crying. It just felt like the saddest thing, that feeling of giving him to somebody else. And I just decided ‘I’m quitting my job.’ I was like, ‘I want this experience.’ And so I did. I quit my job. It wasn't a long discussion with pros and cons, it was this gut decision. And then, I went back to work part-time because I was able to. After my second son was born I was like, ‘Yeah, I'm going to take time off again because I want to.’ And then, after the third one was born, I was like, ‘I am all done. I am now going to be a professional volunteer in schools because that's what I want to do. I'm going to be a Cub Scout den leader and I'm going to be a PTA mom and I'm going to be the classroom rep,’ and that's what I wanted to do and it was not, [how] usually when a spouse says I'm giving up my job, usually you sit at the table and you kind of talk about it but for me it was more of an announcement like ‘I’m just going to quit my job.’ And the decision to go back to school was, ‘I need to get out of this house.’ People usually ask, ‘Well, how did you decide to become a teacher?’ — usually you get responses like ‘I want to make a difference in a child's life’ or ‘I wanted to do something meaningful’ right? The reason I went into teaching was because we hired the wrong contractor to do the [remodelling] for our house. He was a monster; he was a horrible, horrible man, and he yelled and screamed at us all the time. He was a huge bully and he took all the money and more that we had budgeted for this remodel. His work was garbage, and we had to spend more money that we didn't have that I had to borrow from my mom so that we could hire a lawyer to get him out of the house because he was threatening. And it was scary. When we moved back into the house from the apartment that we were in, there were wires sticking out of the sockets and the floors kind of slumped down, even now you can see where the extension was in the bedroom because if you were to play marbles, they would all roll that way.

Every day after, I would just sit at home all day and I would just obsess. My focus would be on every single thing that went wrong. This paint wasn't right, this outlet is in the wrong place. Like, why did we do this? What was wrong with the old house? And we don't have money to go out to eat anymore; we used to be able to go out to eat and we couldn't do that. We couldn't buy anything and so we came back to this empty house, and I put on my Facebook page, ‘I need furniture. Who's got furniture,’ and all of a sudden I had all these friends that were like, ‘Take my living room set, take my bed, take the dining set. I've got beds.’ And my house was furnished with furniture from all these friends and they had nicer furniture than the stuff that we [had] to begin with. But I realized that every morning I would wake up just crying. I would just cry every morning and I realized I was just spiraling in this depression, and me spiraling was not good for my kids. I could see my kids just kind of being unhappy because they reflected my sadness, and I realized that being in this house was the most unhealthy thing for me. And the way I got myself out of that was – I’m a fabulous cook; I'm a modest person except when it comes to my cooking. I'm a fabulous cook. Nobody has to tell me, I just tell that to myself. And of course everyone tells me —  so I would cook every day at lunch, and I could not make it through the day by myself. So I would randomly call up any friends who would come and join me for lunch at my house. And I would sit and I would just tell my tale of woe over and over and over again, and each friend as I shared my tale of woe with would all of a sudden be like, ‘Oh yes, that happened to me too,’ and they would kind of reassure me that it's OK, it happens, but it gets better. 

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I remember my mom said to me, ‘Money is like the tides of the ocean, so when it comes to you, it's going to come to you. When it goes away, when it's taken away from you, you have to just let it go. But it's OK because like the ocean tides, it comes back. So each person sharing their story and telling me that I wasn’t going to be in this position forever made me validate my feelings of sadness. Though there were friends who were like, ‘Why are you sad? This is stupid you've got this gorgeous house now. If it were me, I'd be having a dinner party.’ But you know, you need friends like that, just to tell you ‘OK, shut up now and get over this, get over yourself.’ But I realized that I needed to get out of the house. 

I was a programmer for 10 years before I quit my job, but I realized after 15 years of staying home, if I wanted to go back to being a programmer, I'd have to go back to school to become current again. And I thought to myself, ‘I’m going back to school, but heck, I can learn anything.’ So I went to the websites of Stanford, Santa Clara and San Jose State and I was like, ‘OK, who's taking in applications now.’ It turned out to be San Jose State. I looked and it said teaching seminars are every month and the next one was two weeks away. I was like, ‘Done, I'm going.’ And I realized, because I volunteered all these years in the classroom, that I had hours of volunteer work behind me and also deep connections that I’d made with teachers who could write me letters of recommendation. And so when I went and they were like ‘Yeah, you need this many hours of volunteering in the classroom, you need letters of recommendation from somebody in the education field,’ I was like, ’Done and done.’ So I came home and I immediately started reaching out to people, getting my transcripts sent over, filling in the application, and then I went for my interview to get accepted into the program. And so I'm sitting there, the director was talking to me and, and at the end of the interview she said, ‘You know what, I never do this but I'm going to tell you right now, you are meant to be a teacher,’ and I was like ‘Oh,’ but then I got cold feet and I was like ‘I don't know if I can do this. This is daunting. Could I really be a teacher?’ To me, being a teacher held the most responsibility of any job, and the good teachers that my kids have had, I always just idolized them. [Those teachers] were my angels because they're not easy kids. And so they had their moments where they needed an angel, and one appeared in the form of a teacher. So, to me, that was the most daunting thing to be. And so during this process, I'd get cold feet, like, “Oh I missed the deadlines for the transcripts, looks like it’s too late, I can’t keep going, I missed that boat.’ But then something would pop up, like an email or letter in the mail saying, ‘Dear applicants, we just wanted to inform you that we've exceeded the deadline for your transcripts,’ and I would be like, ‘Oh, I guess that means I gotta keep going.’ Or I would take the multi-subject test that you have to pass in order to be a teacher, which I had meant to study for, but I never got beyond the first six pages of the study guide, and I'd be like, ‘Well, I'll just go take the test and if I fail, well, I guess I just wasn't meant to be a teacher.’ So I went on a Saturday morning, and I took this test, and I just remember we had essay portions for each of the subjects. And I remember the social studies portion was this question about what happened in California in the 18 somethings — lord only knows — but I just finished volunteering in third grade at McAuliffe with my youngest son, so I knew all about the Ohlones. I just wrote a lot about the Ohlones. It was a great essay about the Ohlones and I walked out of there saying, ‘If I pass, I get to keep going and if I don't pass, looks like it's just not meant to be.’ Well, lo and behold, I passed and it was like, ‘Oh, I guess I gotta keep going.’ 

Every single step, every part of that process, I just felt this invisible hand kind of pushing me in this direction. And even when I would think, ‘I can't, I can’t,’ it would be like, ‘Yes you can, yes you can.’ And oh my gosh, the two years in that program was so much fun, because I was like 45, and then everybody else in the program was like in their 20s and I had such a great time with these 23 year olds, and we'd be sitting in class and whispering and giggling and cracking each other up and complaining about the work or the teachers or whatever. I just love that whole process of being in school, and so eventually, I did become a teacher, but that to me has been the most life changing thing. Before the remodeling I was content with my life — I always have been — and very aware of every blessing that I had in my life and grateful for all of them. I would always just wake up thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I can't believe I have this life.’ But man, oh man, nothing could have prepared me for this happiness. You know, what I realized is teaching builds your life with so much more than I could have ever hoped or dreamed or imagined. So yeah, I started off with wanting a new house and that's how I became a teacher.”