Dear Future Teachers,

Thank you for choosing to spend the rest of your life to work with the future. As you have probably learned from telling relatives and family friends about your plans of becoming a teacher, they expressed their concerns for your financial wellbeing. You could have chosen any other job; you could have chosen a job with more benefits and definitely more money, but instead you chose teaching. People don’t just choose teaching because of the money; they choose it because they love what they do.

You have probably also learned that teaching isn’t going to be easy, in fact it’s going to be really hard. Sitting through classes learning about how poverty is effecting children everyday is heart wrenching, and it makes you want to jump right into teaching to make a difference to every students’ life. Knowing that students are coming to school hungry everyday makes you want to go to Sam’s Club and buy breakfast bars and juice in bulk just to ensure your students are full. Knowing that your students could be coming to school with weight on their shoulders from their home lives makes you want to take away all the pain they are going through. Knowing that students are suffering from learning disabilities makes you want to dedicate your personal life to them to ensure they are on track with the rest of the students their age. Thank you so much for being up to the challenge of becoming a teacher.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve had a few amazing teachers who truly inspired you, and you’ve also had those awful teachers who made you think, “one day, I’m going to be a much better teacher than this.” Those are the teachers you thank, because they helped you realize what you truly want to do in life. Those are the teachers to be grateful for because they impacted your life so much back then and continue to even now that you are a college student. Those are the teachers to thank because it validates that you are indeed going to make a difference in at least one student’s life, and for you, that’s enough. I’ve heard the saying, “you can’t save everyone” but for a future teacher that saying doesn’t apply. For you, trying to save everyone is your mission. Trying to impact each and every student is nearly missioned impossible but you’re stilling willing to do the unimaginable. For a future teacher, those are truly #goals.

It takes a special person to become a teacher, and you are one of those special people. Although it may seem that you are underappreciated and underpaid, you of all people know that being a teacher is one of the most rewarding jobs there is. Seeing students finally grasp a concept that you’ve been teaching for months are what we live for. We live for the moments when students come up to us and feel comfortable talking about their personal lives because they trust us enough. They consider us a friend; someone who sincerely cares about them. Those defining moments are what prove this all to be worth it.

Thank you,

A Fellow Future Teacher