I've wanted to be a teacher since before I even went to kindergarten. There were times here and there when I thought maybe I wanted to be a chemical engineer, or maybe I wanted to be a pharmacist, but I always found reasons why, for me, teaching was better than those things.
I used to force my great-grandparents or cousins to sit down with me and be my "students" as I pretended to teach them everything I thought they needed to know. I created worksheets and tests, corrected them, and, of course, as any good teacher would, I gave out stickers to those who I thought deserved them. I was sending these poor people to the principal's office before I even knew what that place looked like! (Not that I ever really found out...)
During my junior year of high school, people began to ask me the dreaded, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" question, and they expected a legitimate answer. Luckily, I did have an answer for them. But that's when I began to realize that not everyone was going to be supportive of my career choice.
I had always been on high honor roll, I was involved in extracurricular activities, and I was on track to becoming the salutatorian of my graduating class. With that track record, I guess people thought I was going to do something that met their expectations of something extra incredible. In my mind, teaching does meet that expectation. But to others, they said it was a "waste of a good brain" for me to become a teacher. But all I could think was, don't people want teachers to be intelligent?
People say "Those who can't do, teach." But how can that be true? Teachers are not just teachers: They're librarians, nurses, custodians, party planners, travel agents, bankers, detectives, referees, preachers, psychologists, confidantes, and so much more. They do so much for their students, and they do it all out of pure love. Maybe they aren't experts in any one field because, instead, they teach reading, writing, math, science, social studies, and things far beyond the core curriculum.
And now, four years after people started expecting that different answer, I'm a junior in college working harder than I've ever had to, learning how to be an effective teacher. Education is hard work. My brain is not being wasted. It's being filled with knowledge that I'll use to inspire and educate hundreds of children. So, to anyone who told me that I should rethink becoming a teacher and consider putting my brain to better use, next time you run into someone like me, please instead encourage them to follow their dreams, just as I am.
