Nadia Kader: PropelNM

I always loved school. I found the structure to be a source of comfort for me. I was indifferent towards my instructors, but I always read voraciously. In elementary school, I would spend every lunch period in the library reading as much as I could in the time allotted, while eating a plain bagel with butter. It was always the same routine, away from all the loud noises, messiness, and hustle and bustle of elementary school children. Being diagnosed with autism and ADHD as an adult, these behaviours make much more sense. I continued with schooling all the way up to a Master’s degree, but I never quite figured out what I wanted to do.

I worked a lot of odd jobs as an adult, primarily as a means of survival. “If I could find a tolerable job that pays me a living wage, I’d be set.” This is what I told myself over and over again, and it was 100% not true. The more I job-hopped, looking for anything tolerable and keeping my interest, the more exhausted I became. I don’t like being treated as an underling, and I value learning above all else. Also, living in New York City, the bar for a livable wage was considerably higher. It’s an incredibly expensive city with an overwhelming amount of human beings living there. For a long time, I made minimum wage and subsisted on packaged ramen, rice, beans, candy, and caffeine to survive.

I was a burntout, queer, first-generation human being who constantly struggled to relate to people. I couldn’t understand why everything was so hard all the time. The thing I excelled at the most was teaching myself, but how could I sustain myself by reading constantly? I thought I just needed to be more disciplined. 

At a particularly stressful time in my life, I was looking for something that would give me purpose. I was adjuncting in the same program I graduated from with my bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The adjunct pay barely gave me enough to survive, so I also worked as a barista. This was completely unsustainable, and I almost lost my mind with all the commuting and struggling to figure out how to pay rent and bills on the months when I wasn’t teaching. Periodically, I would sell my books at The Strand, a large, multi-story bookstore in Manhattan, and use the money for my Metrocard (the bus pass in NYC at the time), and double down on eating leftover buns and sandwiches at the cafe I worked at.

I found that my local library was looking for volunteer tutors, so I signed up. I could try this teaching thing again, but with a different audience closer to my apartment. After a 20-hour training where I still felt completely unprepared, I was moved into an HSE volunteer tutor position, the first of its kind at the organization. My tutoring group kept growing because of two factors: 1. It was the only option available on the weekends for working adults, and 2. My students liked me. Eventually, the group grew enough to a point where they needed to hire me part-time. My career has skyrocketed since. I moved to New Mexico, where I transitioned from part-time teaching to full-time teaching, administration, and, finally, as a professional learning coordinator.

I am paid to learn and grow, which I didn’t realize was what I really wanted. I wanted to be challenged, I wanted to grow, and I wanted to feel valued. My differently wired brain is valued in adult education in a way that wasn’t in the other jobs I worked. I am not an outsider, but part of a large community of dedicated, passionate, differently-wired people.  I am paid to support people in their professional growth. I create projects where people can share knowledge and reflect on their practices, one of which is the Connect with Adult Ed podcast and the expansion of the project, My Adult Ed Story. I am so grateful to all who gave me an opportunity to really thrive.