Advice on Becoming a Teacher

When I posted this about going back to school, I received a comment in which the reader asked, "Do you have any advice on becoming a teacher?"  And since I love to give advice and am passionate about public schooling and teaching, I thought I'd post some of the things I think are most important when considering a career in education.  And, since I know most of my reader base are already educators, I invite you to weigh in in the comments section if you are :)

Let's start with a few guiding questions.

• Are you a good time-manager?
• Do you like to be busy?  Like, don't-have-time-to-pee busy?
• Are you a good people-person?
• Are you unlikely to confront people or problems?
• Do you have trouble multi-tasking?
• Do you have problems surrendering your own ideas in favor of ideas that may seem, well, stupid, for the sake of commonality and peace?
• Do you have a good memory?
• Are you in the habit of living your life in ways young people can and should emulate?
• Do you have a loud voice?
• Are you able to keep your cool in stressful situations?
• Are you a natural leader?
• Are you tech-savvy, or willing to become so with little to no training or resources?
• Are you willing to put in ten hour plus days with no overtime?
• Are you willing to pour your heart into kids, many of whom will not appreciate it and maybe even resent you for it?
• Do you get hurt or offended easily?
• Are you organized and responsible enough to keep track of 351 things at once?
• Are you easy to work with?
• Are you energetic?
• Are you able to remove or apply emotion at will and adequately assess what situations require which?
• Are you willing to take work home?

There are so many things required of us as teachers.  As an engineer, my husband can go into work, sit at a desk, maybe talk to ten people all day, and perform his job to its fullest extent.  As a teacher, you never sit, you talk to a hundred people - maybe more - and you never feel like you have performed your job to it's fullest extent.  There is always something you should have done differently, something you forgot, something you wish you had said.

The other part of this is the reality that teaching itself is only one small piece of the pie.  This is something they don't teach you in college.  Of the 480 minutes in my duty day, only 230 are devoted to actual class time.  The rest is supervision (bus duty, passing time), meetings (team, SIT, IEPs, parent, PLCs, faculty, etc), communications, technology, lesson planning, making copies, gathering materials, working with kids who are behind, generating handouts, worksheets, projects, you name it.  It's like the ice cube in the cup.  The part above the water is what happens in class and the part below, which is the huge part, is what happens "behind the scenes," so to speak.

And teaching is rough.  Kids who are mean and disrespectful to you and others.  Co-workers who don't pull their weight.  Teaching a lesson that flops and realizing they didn't get it and now you have to start again from scratch.  Administrators who don't support teachers.  Parents who tell you how to do your job, which essentially means requiring their kid to do nothing because that's what they do at home.  Providing free and appropriate public education without the funds to fully and correctly implement it.  Kids who feel safer at school than at home.  Working late and missing spending time with your own family.  Awkward and angry parent/teacher conferences.  And so on and so on and so on.

But for every negative, there are multiple positives.  Kids who do their work, for instance.  Co-workers who love and support you.  A card or gift from a parent saying that they appreciate your work.  A kid who drew you a picture (yes, even in middle school).  The "aha!" moment, when the kids GET IT.  A fabulous, fabulous piece of writing.  A kid helping another kid.  Smiles.  Waves.  Weird quirks.  Whole class laughter because the kid used dish soap instead of hand soap and flooded the sink and counter with bubbles.  Because when the kid delivered his speech he gave an involuntary burp in the middle of the word "plagiarism."  Because the teacher accidentally said "the grant and the asshopper" instead of "the ant and the grasshopper."

Because while there is nothing particularly special about reading, or science, or social studies, there is something extraordinarily special about relationships.  And ultimately, that is what all of teaching - and life, really - comes to.  Investing in
students.
writers.
readers.
mathematicians.
athletes.
loners.
bullies.
neglected sons and daughters.
leaders.
followers.
fighters.
outcasts.
the hopeless.
the confident.
the confused.
the hurt.
the down-trodden.
the loveable.
the unloveable.

If you can focus on these.
If you can manage all that other stuff as secondary - important, but secondary.
If you can fix your eyes on relationships, you can be successful, effective, and fulfilled as a teacher.

My two cents. :)