Life Pushed Me into Education: An Interview with Patricia Ossers
by Meg Petersen

Patricia Ossers was fired from her first teaching job at the age of 17.  Most people don’t get a teaching job that young, much less lose one.  In fact, her age was a bit of an issue.  She was supposed to have been 18 to have the job, and not only was she not 18, which the school did not know, but because of a mix-up with her identity documents, she did not have the required social security paperwork.  Eventually, her secrets were revealed, and she was fired from a job she never thought she should have had.

Patricia never intended to be a teacher. Her aunt owns a boarding school in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic.  She attended the school and passed her summers at the school’s summer camp.  It was too much for her and she thought the last thing she wanted to do was be a teacher.

She might not have ended up in a teaching job at all. She had originally applied for a job at a call center, but when, even though she had never done that kind of work, they wanted to make her a supervisor after a ten-minute interview, her mother told her that something didn’t sound right and she might want to look at the teaching job instead.

Because Patricia was really too young to be hired as a teacher, she required some coaching.  She dressed conservatively to give the impression of being older than she was.  She continued to wear her mother’s clothing when she did things like meet with parents. She would have to make excuses when her co-workers wanted to go out for a drink after work. 

She started her work in the language school in August.  They were paying her in checks, but the human resource office was pressuring her to produce the correct documentation so that they could get her enrolled in the medical insurance system.  

One day in late September, she was pulled from her classroom.  She told her 8-year-old students she was going to the bathroom and would be right back. She didn’t see them for the next two and a half months. 

Her coordinator, who had hired her, cried and pleaded with the human resource people not to let Patricia go.  Patricia remembers her saying, “Please, I can’t take her out of the classroom!  Don’t fire her.”  They finally reached a compromise. Patricia would be fired and removed from the classroom that day, but that if her paperwork situation was worked out, she could be hired back. She had been in the classroom for two months, not enough time for her appointment to be permanent.

Even though Patricia studied psychology and planned to be a clinical psychologist, she is glad she ended up back in the classroom.  She wanted to help others and find that she can do that more effectively as a teacher.  She teaches now at Colegio Babeque as well as at the Dominco-Americano, including their university.  At every turn, she has moved into positions she was not technically qualified for, beginning to teach at the university before she had a masters degree, and teaching at the high school level without any specialized training in the field.  At every turn, she has been lucky.  As she puts it, “Life has pushed me into education.”  But Patricia is glad to be where she is.

Patricia was heartbroken at being fired, mainly because of how it would affect her students.  She was able to get back to see her 8-year-old students at their Christmas Pageant a few months after her firing.  They were worried about her, because rather than telling them that their teacher had been fired, the students had been told that she was out on medical leave.  They asked her with great concern if she was alright.  Eventually she got her paperwork straightened out and went back to teaching.   She has stayed in the classroom ever since.