There are so many conversations that take place centering around educators. From debates in policy and curriculum to program development and implementation, there are a lot of logistics that factor into our education system that draw our focus, but we’re missing the point. Somewhere in the evaluation of test results and the focus on a cohesive curriculum, the conversation zeroes in on the particulars and races ahead of the people responsible for putting them in place, the very same people that must balance that requirement with the individual needs of their students. In all my years of high school, speaking with my teachers about their stance on various changes in the system that they had to tackle each year, I’ve never quite captured a sense of the balance this requires. I attribute this to my lack of experience. I want to be a teacher, but it is not yet my profession. There is a difference between passion and profession, although the two are not mutually exclusive.

I did not wake up one morning in the eighth grade and think “I know exactly how to promote access and equity in our nation’s schools.” I didn’t entertain a grand premonition that years later revealed itself to be the Common Core Initiative. I did not romanticize the particulars. I was a writer, an actor at the time, and a lover of books and talking about them incessantly. I had a passion for English (I still do) and story-telling (nothing’s changed). Most of my favorite conversations stemmed from the lunch periods I spent in my teacher’s rooms, the time I was offered after school to conference with them on my papers, and the many instances that these things lead into personal insights on education and their unique class loads. It made absolute, irrefutable sense to me, even then, that I wanted to teach English. I think of the many times I’ve read Hamlet, practically begged my friends to edit their papers, and accidently lead Socratic seminars with little room to remind myself to breathe. I mean, I was that kid. I had a passion, a capability, and the enthusiastic outlook that a life spent encouraging the same in others would make everything worthwhile.

It’s romantic, naïve, but honest. And it is, in many ways, still very much the same for me.

For those in my life that have made teaching their profession, the job requires a certain adaptability and proficiency. There are policies in place, and specific practices that lend itself to managing a classroom. I truly believe, from what I’ve studied and from what is shared with me, that there are brilliant strategies educators can employ that help them reach each individual student. These strategies, when most effective, offer every person the same, equal point of access to every lesson. This does not mean that all contributing factors are equal across the board, rather that the objective is the same no matter the various paths trod to reach it. No two people tackle learning with the same interest, from the same angle. As Plato explores in The Republic, the goal of education, in the ideal city, is to educate children based on their aptitudes. Choosing to disregard his specific concept of specialization, the modern practice of this philosophy is that education is not fit to one specific standard and then carried out in that specific system, unrelenting, for every student. Instead, educators diversify their curriculum in its instruction, pulling from as many strategies as possible to play to each student’s unique strengths. The Standards are not rigid, they’re road markers. This is where passion lends its support to profession in that it is up to the educators to decide what strategies to apply to their classroom to bring every student to achievement, meeting them, as much as they can, where they are strongest.

At the heart of it all, is the common goal of providing the best foundation for the youth in our society. This has been the office education has held since the beginning. There are many other reasons why the people I know teach, there are more reasons that drive me to continue on the path I’m on to do the same, but there is always that established social contract on which we all agree. I love investing myself in projects and working with people to realize goals. Even when I’m not in a classroom tutoring, and instead in a workshop working alongside elementary kids to build bird houses and Lego boxes with compartments for pieces of different sizes, I feel like a teacher. It’s a service, not a rigid system. The classroom is unnecessary. In that workshop, with the little experience I myself had (I was in no way proficient with anything), those kids came to me with their ideas and maybe a few pieces of wood they had found expecting that I would know what to do. They trusted me to show them how to put their creations into reality. And offering the knowledge I had, and working with them to encourage their creativity and progress brought me a crazy amount joy. That drive, that desire to work with others to support their potential and offer them every aid possible to surpass their expectations is what it means to be a teacher. At least to me.