Why do I want to be a teacher?

That’s a good question. I should have expected that this would be one of the questions asked in the Personal Documents for student teaching that I have to submit, but it caught me off guard. I’ve never, successfully, ever captured why I want to be a teacher successfully in words before. There’s a first time for everything though.

Briefly, in elementary school, I spent a significant amount of time hosting pretend school days for my stuffed animals, dolls, and occasionally my younger siblings, but quickly grew bored. I decided, after this brief stint, that I would not be a teacher. Although my mom is a teacher and my aunt is a teacher, I didn’t want to just follow in their footsteps blindly. I understood that what they do is important, but it wasn’t for me. Plus, I didn’t want to teach all the subjects. From there, I tried to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve always liked analyzing how other people think. This probably contributes to why I love books, or my love of books feeds my interest in analyzing how other people think. Either way, I then tried to approach this from a history perspective. How did people in history think the same/differently from me? This led me to pursuing a career in archaeology and the study of ancient languages, epigraphy. Discovering that you have to major in anthropology in order to then major in archaeology, I was discouraged to find out anthropology is ranked the No. 1 worst college major by Forbes (1)    .

Now you might wonder why I didn’t just skip all this and try pursuing being an author right away. It is my passion right? The problem is I am someone who worries a lot. Therefore, I don’t like questions mark after the words job (job?) or paid (paid?). Regardless of my actual job, I was going to pursue being an author simultaneously and deliberately. The next question, probably, is, “Why not major in English?” Simply put, I can’t do what I want to do with an English major without running into the same problems (job? and paid?). While I’m not so narrow minded as to believe that English majors are unemployable, a significant proportion of English majors end up in careers filled to the brim with non-fiction writing. I’m not interested in journalism, advertising, technical writing, or other similar fields.

My next thought was linguistics. How does language interact with thinking (psychology)? Unfortunately for me, I learned in Linguistics 100 that linguistics is less focused on the way language and thinking interacts and centered more on the exact science of word and sentence sentences structure. Boring and routine in my opinion. The most obvious field related to how people think similarly/differently than me is psychology.

Me: “What can you do with a B.A. in psychology?”

College: “Oh lots of things-lots of things.”

Me: “What things?”

College: “Tons.”

Me: “But like in the field of psychology?”

College: “Wellllll…..”

Me: Frowns.

College: Yeah…surrreeee.

Me: So no?

College: “You can do tons of things with a B.A in psych.”

Me: “So I need a Masters.”

College: “….yeah pretty much.”

This is when I thought, “Ok English. I like writing I like reading. The over-analyzing thing not so much but eh it works. Then I can use the summers to do grad school and such.” So, honestly, I wasn’t originally the most passionate to-be teacher. But I’ve come to be passionate about teaching, as I’ve gone through my course work. Really I want to teach high school because 1. I don’t want to teach everything, and 2. I don’t want to teach how to read and how to sit down. But the third reason is as a teenager too many ‘adults’ looked at me like I was a grenade. I hadn’t done anything but at any moment I was going to explode in a ball of angst rebellion and hormones. So teenagers need more hope and fun. There’s too many teacher’s who don’t provide that and just try to make their lives miserable. I want to show students that writing and reading can be incredibly fun and enjoyable. I want them to feel the joy I do when writing and reading, that anything is possible and the world is beautiful. The Eleventh Doctor Who said, “…every time you see them, you remember how sad they’re going to be and it breaks your heart, because what’s the point in them being happy now if they’re going to be sad later? The answer is, of course, because they are going to be sad later.” (2) There’s incredible knowledge to be gained from books etc. etc., but that’s why books and writing are great to me- yes, the world’s sad, corrupt, gloomy, dreary, depressing, and disappointing plenty of times. But as much as it is those, it’s also full of mystery, suspense, wonder, hope…. That’s what I want to show my students about reading and writing OR at least help them see how it can be useful and find out that it’s not so bad.

Sources: 

(1) https://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2012/10/11/the-10-worst-college-majors/

(2) Doctor Who Christmas Special 2011

Image Credit: Kevin Dooley "Teacher"