Luke, now a student in my World History class, asked me that question a year ago during my first year of teaching. He was simply trying to be funny and make conversation during a study hall, not realizing I asked myself that same question almost every day that year and continue to every day.
I love teaching, that is the true answer to the question. I enjoy helping advanced students push themselves harder than they thought possible. I enjoy help struggling students learn how to learn and become confident in their abilities when no other teacher believed in them. Who wouldn't love that? Then why was I constantly asking myself why I was teaching if I knew the answer. The reason is because teaching is HARD. Educators tell you that when you are studying to be a teacher, but it is impossible to fully understand it until you are on your own trying to figure it out. Your first year you have to build your materials, learn classroom management, learn the ways of the school and occasionally sleep. In addition you are playing the role of counselor, mentor, role model, advocator, advise giver, coach, club mentor and more. You come to the school to teach a lesson you put hours into but leave wondering if your student's father will kick her out of the house again and make her walk the streets. You wonder if your strategic seating chart helped the girl who was bullied in her old school make a friend in this one. You want to know if your quiet student made the soccer team, if the actor in your class had a good audition for that commercial, if the surgery of your student with a tumor went well, and how on earth he can deal with that without telling another soul at school. You go home with a list of things to do, papers to grade and lessons to plan, but wondering why you became a teacher if there are more important things for your students to learn than when the Roman Empire fell or what led to the rise of the Renaissance.
It is after going home with those worries in your head for months on end that you finally figure out what your job is. Yes, you may have to teach your students the history of the world, how to write an essay and how to analyze documents, but that is not your real job. Your real job is to teach them the life skills to survive, to become good people and most importantly, to realize their full potential. It is then that you beginning designing your lessons around life skills that are taught through content. You ask them to analyze why history is important then ask them to reflect on whether knowing their personal history makes people better understand them. You ask them if one person can make a difference in the world when you analyze Julius Caesar. You make them have meaningful conversation with their classmates when learning about the Black Plague and reflect on how lives can change in the blink of the eye. You make them analyze their personal life journey when learning about the journey people went on in the times of the Silk Road (Silk Road Project). You make them work in teams to know what it's like to work together and you make them fail as a team to teach them how to go down as one and rise up as one. You make them question themselves and everything they know, constantly asking them what history they are making and if they are making a difference. You teach them responsibility, perseverance and hard work. Yes, you are teaching them content, but it is so much more than that.
Why did I become a teacher? I wanted to make history fun. Why am I still a teacher? I want my students to have the life skills to make it in the world and I want to see them succeed. I want them to walk out of my classroom better than they walked in and at the end of every class I ask myself if I have done that.
Border- http://the3amteacher.blogspot.com/
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