The "careers" that I had chosen and that had chosen me -- writing poetry and doing community organizing -- were not careers that would pay the rent. So, in 1985, after obtaining an undergraduate degree in American Studies, I moved to Boston to enroll in a one-year piano tuning certificate program at the North Bennet Street School in the North End of Boston. Still, during the piano tuning course, and then to my dismay, after it, I was not eking out much of a living. Besides, once I understood the theory of tuning through harmonics, the perfect pitch of an "A" beating at 440 and tuning imperfect fifths and fourths into one perfect little octave, I was bored. I had other callings that I was just beginning to listen to.

I had put my name into the Boston public school substitute teaching list and lo and behold, the phone rang one morning at 6:00 AM exactly. They wanted me to teach writing and literature to a class of 11th graders at the Jamaica Plain High School as a substitute teacher. I loved it and wanted a more stable teaching career. I found a full-time teaching/advocacy position at City Roots on Mission Hill and one thing led to another. Slowly, the piano tuning dissolved and the writing and teaching took root.

Eventually, I finished an MFA writing program at Goddard College in Vermont where I could also become certified in teaching high-school English, start a novel that is just now coming to completion, and continue to teach literacy, writing, and English at community colleges and adult education programs throughout Boston and the North Shore. I got a car, which became my teaching office. I even remember driving students home and "conferencing" in it as I learned how to negotiate the Tobin Bridge in rush-hour and not talk so much with my hands.

Fifteen years later my CV looks like a patchwork quilt-coordinating and teaching in a family literacy program at the Archdale Housing Development in Roslindale; teaching math, English, and social studies to teenage men at the DYS secure treatment facility in my neighborhood; teaching ESOL here and there, consulting to ABE programs; and years as adjunct English faculty at Roxbury Community College. I have loved how the field has allowed me to bring together my leftist, social change/feminist change politics, my love and commitment to the daring act of writing and making art, and the intellectual pursuits of pedagogy and policy.

Since 1999, I've been coordinating a home-buying readiness curricula and technical assistance project at the Adult Literacy Resource Institute. This job supports what I like best: room for teachers and others to reflect on what makes good practice and how we can be part of real learning for real people. I get to work with teachers, students, program coordinators, affordable housing activists and counselors to co-create curricula and refine training approaches. So far, so good. We'll see what's next.

Deborah Schwartz is the coordinator of the Fannie Mae Foundation/ALRI Homebuying Readiness Project at the Adult Literacy Resource Institute. She can be reached at: deborah@alri.org