MY CAREER IN A TEACHING - LEARNING ZONE...

Why do I choose teaching?

For some, teaching is a family tradition, a craft that one naturally masters and a world that surrounds one from childhood. Teaching can be a way of sharing power, of convincing people to value what one values, or to explore the world with oneself or through oneself. I choose teaching because I want to enjoy being with young people and watching them grow.

I want to be teacher to protect and nurture people younger than themselves, young people who have every likelihood of being damaged during their school years.

Everyone who goes into teaching, even temporarily, has many reasons for choosing to spend five hours a day with young people. These reasons are often unarticulated and more complex than one imagines. Yet they have significant effects on everyday work with students and on the satisfaction and strength the teacher gets from that work. Consequently, it makes sense if one is thinking of becoming a teacher, to begin questioning oneself and understanding what one expects from teaching and what one is willing to give to the profession.

I choose this profession not because school was awful, or because one was damaged, or because one needs a job and working as a teacher is more respectable then working as a cab driver or salesperson.

What does one know that she/he can teach or share with his/her students? Too many young people coming out of college believe that they do not know anything worth sharing, or at least feel they haven't learned anything valuable during their training. Teacher training usually doesn't help since it concentrates on “teaching skills” rather than the content of what might be learned.

It takes years to learn how to teach well, and even then one never learns once and for all. Teaching is not like driving a car or adding a column of figures. Each group of students one works with has different needs and present new challenges. Like any craft, one learns teaching by practicing it and by finding models, other teachers whose practices one admires and can study.