by Jason Alberty

Created on: January 26, 2009

Good Reasons to Choose Teaching as a Profession

Why You Should Become a Teacher

There are many good reasons to become a teacher. Teaching can be one of the most rewarding careers out there.

If you feel that teaching is more of a calling than just a job, you probably think so for one of the following reasons. Great teachers come packed with them all.

Love for Kids

This seems like a no-brainer, but you would be surprised how many people get to their student teaching semester and discover they are either uncomfortable around kids or, oddly enough, hate children. Love for kids is simply a must. Kids have an innate ability to feel when people like them or not. Liking kids will make your job infinitely easier.

Love for Your Subject
The more teachers love what they are teaching the more they can bring it alive for the kids. If you dislike your subject it becomes a task and your kids will feel it and react accordingly.

Love for Learning
If you know everythingdon't teach. You must be able to learn as you go, especially in your first five years. You will also have to deal with professional enrichment classes. The best teachers are also always tweaking their lessons because they have learned something new about the subject or how the students intake and process the information.

Desire to Make a Positive Difference
If you are interested in simply maintaining the status quo then become an inspector. If you want to take a kid who has to sleep in the closet because his step-father beats him up every time he sees him, and help that kid see what learning can do to improve his future, then teaching might be for you.

Hope for the Future
Kids are pure potential. Even the most benign thing you say can destroy their day or open up the future for them. Teaching is a bit like alchemy, part science part magic. But you must always remember that the kids you talk to everyday are the leaders and thinkers, the professionals and artists of tomorrow. A good teacher can be immortalized in a student's future.

There are also some major general considerations that may flavor your decision to become a teacher.

The joy and pain of collegiality
Teaching is ultimately a team profession. You will have to take classes, be on committees, go to conferences, interact with your colleagues. And like any business, there will be people you like and people you don't. You can find both a great mentor and a nefarious nemesis.

Student apathy
This may be the most devastating thing a teacher can deal with. There are many students who simply don't care, no matter how excited or good you are at teaching them.

The parent dynamic
Your first parent/teacher conference will open your eyes to an absolutely new perspective of teaching. Most parents are on your side, wanting what you want for their kids. A few, however, can make you question your desire to teach.

Educational trends
American education has been likened to a pendulum swinging from left to right with the dictates of the prevailing government and educational research. Would that it were that predictable. It is more like a feather in the wind. New techniques are espoused and worked for a while then discarded for the next new thing. You must be flexible and choose the things that work for you. Discard the things that don'twhen you have that option.

Children in the river
You must be prepared to lose some. A colleague lived by the aphorism that school is like a swollen, flooded river filled with children. You, as the teacher, stand on the banks with your hand stretched far out over the swirling river to catch as many students as you can. Some students will simply not reach out for your hand. Some students will reach out, but, alas, will succumb to the river. You must be prepared for that.

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