Why Teach? part 2

So, why do I teach? That answer to that question has so many parts I could never completely answer it. The starting point is indeed my childhood, where I grew up as a Teacher's Kid. My mother taught elementary school. In fact, she initially taught in the elementary school I went to. The thing was, the school was a small one, only thirteen classrooms when I started there, one of which housed the library. Everyone in the school knew who my mother was. That could have been problematic, and probably was for my younger sister, but it didn't seem to be for me. Perhaps because my graduation year was the only cohort of students my mother did NOT teach in her thirty-five year teaching career. As I moved from second grade to third, my mother switched from teaching third grade to second, thereby missing my class completely.

Even so, I loved school. I could read, write and learn new things. One day, I found some of my mother's extra teacher books and some student editions in the basement. I started reading through the teacher editions and started teaching my own lessons. My parents got me a chalkboard and we set up some desks like a classroom. My dolls found their way into the seats and I started "teaching" them. My friends thought I was somewhat crazy, wanting to "play school" even in the summer.

So, for me teaching has been a lifelong adventure. Getting to where I am today, teaching high school science, was not a short and easy path, however. In high school in the late-1970s, when many students were considering options for college, I was outright told by my parents that being a teacher would not be an option for me if I wanted the money to go to college. My mother faced losing her job each year, despite being tenured, due to budgetary issues. This is indeed where many teachers find themselves today in our foundering economy. I am worried about this choice I made twelve years ago, but have learned to "let go and let God." It would take that time to find my way to the classroom. My first teaching mentor was my mother, who gave me advice as I began substitute teaching and helped me find good training programs. She guided me through the process of getting my certification, provided introductions to school district personnel, even helped me arrange my student teaching experience.

My mom passed away in 1999, after a year-long battle with adenocarcinoma (a form of cancer). During the last six months of her life, she struggled to maintain clear thinking as she began liver failure. She was forced to retire, spending the second semester of her final year of employment on sick leave, using every available sick day and borrowing three days donated by some of her colleagues. One of her last truly lucid statements to me was an apology for not allowing me to become a teacher when I was younger. She had watched me get halfway through my teacher training, but would not live to see me get my certification. I was one month into my student teaching in the elementary school where she had taught for thirty years when she passed away. My cooperating teacher was been someone she had mentored as a new teacher nearly twenty years before.

Why do I teach? It's a calling, one I received many, many years ago. No matter how I tried to find my niche elsewhere, I kept coming back to it. I'm a Teacher's Kid and, yes, I am following in her footsteps, after a fashion. I feel connected to her when I am in the classroom. Yet, I am at peace as well. What does teaching do for me? It gives me a happiness and fills me with joy (most days, anyway) that only God can provide. He's the one who put the need to teach in me. My mother just showed me the way. How does that peace, happiness and joy manifest itself? What does it do? Why have I been called to this? That's for next time...

Why Teach?

Recently, I added myself to Facebook. As I reconnect to friends whom I lost track of long ago, I find myself forced to once again answer a question I get from people familiar with only some of my background...Why do you teach high school? I heard it often in the many job interviews that eventually led to my current position. That question leads me to reflect on the many related questions that usually follow it up... (1) You have so much education. Why are you teaching instead of researching? (2) Why teach high school instead of college? (3) Why do you teach "those kids"? (4) I know, it's because of your Mom, isn't it? (5) Couldn't you get a better job? (6) Why teaching? (7) How do you put up with all of "it"? (8) Why...? And the list goes on, and on, AND ON...

Here's what I've come to understand... For many of us, our career is just that, a job that pays the bills. We don't really see the many fruits of our labors at all, beyond the paycheck and outward, worldly examples of "success." Few of us see our careers as a calling. Oh, sure, pastors, preachers, priests, nuns, missionaries, and the like speak of what they do as "A Calling". How many of the rest of us do, really? Do we see it that way, or simply use the term? Well, I do see it that way, and this week I am going to reflect on the reasons for that viewpoint. It's part of the Journey of Faith that I am traveling. I hope to answer some of those many questions about why I teach as well.