To be honest, my purpose for becoming a teacher is based on what I need. I haven't worked a full-time job for a very long time due to health problems. I was only recently diagnosed properly this summer at the Mayo Clinic. To put it very short, if I don't eat a low-fat/high carb meal or snack every couple of hours my body starts to break down my muscles effectively immobilizing me. Once I learned that I could manage my condition easily through diet, I started thinking about going back to work. I realized though that I would need a job that would make it easy for me to follow my prescribed diet or I wouldn't be able to maintain working for very long. Light bulb...why not teach high school? Classes change every hour and a half which would then signal snack time. So, here I am.
Having said that, I wouldn't have pursued this if I didn't know I would also enjoy it and be good at it. When I did work, it was always serving children and families. Most recently I spent the last year as a tutor and found that I received a lot of feedback from students that my methods were helpful to them. I also spent some time homeschooling, including teaching classes in a co-op, and I really enjoyed it. My goal for my classroom will be to create an environment that is respectful and nurturing. I hope build relationships with all my students so that they feel safe, cared about, and that their contributions to the class are important. I want my students to learn the material they need to learn while also developing good thinking and problem solving skills. I think my job as a teacher is not only to teach subject matter, but to prepare them for their future in general.
My prediction for the Super Bowl is that I will keep my spending under $100 at the mall while my husband is with his friends watching the game.
I am so glad you were able to manage you condition because I think you will be a wonderful teacher. The respectful and nurturing environment you wish to create will really benefit the students and I bet will lead to them learning more. I know it wasn’t often in high school where I felt my contributions to class were very meaningful, so I am so glad that you wish to bring that to your classroom.
ReplyDeleteI was pondering why would anyone want to teach earlier today. It is placing oneself in a bureaucratic and paperwork filled position which is underpaid and under praised. Your blog helped resolve a little of that, it is because that is what we were destined to be, and have probably always been, we just didn't do it formally. It is also intriguing that so many go into it mid-life or after a career. Erikson's Generativity. You will do very well, and the Giant's won by the way.
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