Being an education major has given me a lot of insight into the world of teaching (obviously), but it has also given me a lot of insight as to why I want to be a teacher. Whenever someone asks me what my major is and I tell them I want to be a teacher, I frequently receive responses like, "Wow, you are crazy" or "Haha, you won't make any money doing that"...and the list goes on and on. Granted, these phrases don't really bother me anymore like they used to. Why? Because I am so in love with the idea of being a teacher and I feel like phrases like that don't even give me the opportunity to respond with anything meaningful. So here is some insight as to why I want to be a teacher.
I want to be a teacher because I want to make a difference in students' lives. As cliche as that sounds, I had a lot of teachers through the years that strongly influenced me to become a teacher myself. You know the type, the ones where you walk into the classroom excited about the day because you know it will be fun (and hopefully filled with candy)...yeah I want to be that kind of teacher.
I want to be a teacher because I have also experienced horrible teachers. One time I had a teacher give me a C on a paper because my topic wasn't "realistic" ...I wrote about a family member with autism. If I can take the place of even one teacher that is like that my life would be complete.
I want to be a teacher because I care about what the future of our country's brains are thinking about. Being a teacher would mean that I would get to spend significant amounts of time picking these students' brains, helping them to learn, and hopefully gaining some insight into how they think and interact.
I want to be a teacher because I still want to learn. Part of being a teacher is having the ability to take a step back and really learn from certain situations with your students. What kind of teacher would I be to assume that I couldn't learn anything else? One of my favorite parts about observing classrooms, and one of my favorite things to look forward to as a future teacher is learning something new from my students.
So, now you know. Next time someone tells you he or she wants to be a teacher, instead of making some degrading comment or wishing us luck, just say "wow, that is awesome!" Because you know what, it is awesome. And I couldn't be more excited about it.
