"Be a doctor." "Do something with math or science." "You're not going to make any money by becoming a teacher."
When I made the decision to become an English teacher, everyone had something to say about it. Honestly, I have to admit that there are days where I still avoid the conversation about majors and career choices because compared to the other people I won't be making a large amount of money and that seems to be the only thing that people care about.
Although I don't have the strength to always say it in the moment, I'm here now to say that I honestly do not care about the money I will be making in the future.
While being a Secondary Education and an English Major at Temple University, I have had the opportunity to enter classrooms around the city and surrounding suburbs. During these experiences I have learned that there is nothing more rewarding than seeing your students actively participating and engaging with you in the classroom. I genuinely feel happy talking with my students, learning about their daily lives, and connecting it to the material we learn about. In these ways my future career path has become less about the paycheck I will be walking away with and more about the connections I create along the way.
After speaking with classmates in the College of Education, I'm glad to see that I am not the only person looking forward to becoming a teacher despite the low pay grade. When we have conversations about what we are excited for and worried about, we almost never talk about the amount of money we will be paid. Rather, our concerns are usually about whether or not we will be able to have students be interested in the material we are giving them. It is within these conversations that I have learned that these are the types of people who need to become educators. We don't care about the pay and we all want to make an impact in the community around us.
