on Being a Teacher

Why do people have an issue with the teaching profession? Why is it that whenever someone asks you what's your major is or what your plans and your answer is teaching, they cringe and make this weird face? Do they not know that if it weren't for teachers they wouldn't be rich stock brokers, fancy architects, scientist & witty engineers? Are they aware that in order for them to get there they needed quite a number of teachers to educate them throughout their scholastic lives?

And please people stop repeating "those who can't do, teach" cliche. When people say that it just shows how much little consideration they have for others and it shows the extent of their obliviousness. Trust me, there are other jobs as an English Literature major that we can do. From working in the media, in movies, publishing, to writing political speeches, to writing porn for the internet. There are honestly too many job titles to list them all! But rest assure, we do not go into teaching because we "cannot do" or don't have the kahunas to do "what they really want to do"

Personally, i wanted to keep my options open, so i decided to do a Teaching Diploma. But i honestly appreciate the work of a teacher. I've always considered it one of the noblest professions. Donald Quinn once said: "If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 40 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job."

If anything teachers should be given congregational honors for even choosing to go into such a profession, where not only reaching the students is tough, but reaching their parents is sometimes even worse. A profession in which society mocks and belittles you. And not to mention, we definitely do not get paid enough to be the teacher, the mother, the big brothers, the psychologist, the babysitters etc. BUT we still choose this profession. Now some of you will not understand why a person would willingly go into such a profession knowing all that we know. Well Taylor Mali, one of my favorite people, says it perfectly in his "What Teachers Make".

It is really a complex jumble of emotions that even if i could try to explain what it is to myself, i wouldn't be able to put it into a few mumbled strings of words. It's the genuine sparkle of interest in a student's eye that just hits you when you're taking a quick glance around the class that might make a person understand. So, it's really not about the money. No teacher is in denial about how low of a salary s/he will be offered. But it's about that feeling that fills you up inside knowing that you touched at least one student; that you got through to someone. We don't work with rocks, canvases, lab rats, chemicals, papers or money. We choose to work with humans; with students. So that's why I do it. The perk is a conscious human connection. Awareness of a humane communication in an isolated world where little do we know of how much affect we have on each other, both negatively and positively.