Why do I want to be a teacher?

This was a journal I was required to do towards the beginning of the semester for my Intro to Education class. I thought I would share it with you guys here. :-) 

I hate questions like this. It’s kind of like asking me, “Why do you love chocolate?” Well, I… I… I don’t know. I just do. It was that way for me when I first pondered this question. Why do I want to be a teacher? I can think of a few cheesy, cliché reasons, but I don’t want to use those as real reasons and many of the traditional reasons don’t fit me either. For example, it’s true that I love children, but I don’t want to teach students who will think of themselves as children. The students I want to teach are just on the cusp of adulthood. They think they are all grown up and have little left to learn. They’ll think they are ready to face the world and all the challenges in it, like we each did at sixteen. So this, already, sounds like a challenge. Luckily, I like being challenged. So that’s a reason. I want to be a teacher because it will be challenging.

Therefore, I want to be a teacher so that every day I walk into that classroom, I will be pushed, both by myself and my students, to give my best. I will be challenged to give them work that will mean something and in this will be giving my own life meaning. I want to push my students to edit, analyze, and think in ways that they may not have before. I want to prepare students to learn for a lifetime and not merely memorize facts for a test. I hope to learn from my students and adapt to what they need to know to survive in the world past high school. I want to be a teacher so I can make a difference in the world. I would like to help children who may not have previously thought they could attend college realize that dream. It would be great to be sited as the inspiration and reason behind the future of our nation. I want to be a teacher for all the students who are hungry to learn and hungry to succeed but people have told them they can’t and won’t succeed or learn. I want to be at the very least, the one positive light in my student’s lives. I hope to be the one who will always stand in their corner and fight for them and what’s best for them.

I realize this sounds very lofty and idyllic, but I think that in order to be a teacher one needs to have strong ideas of how he or she would like the future be. Every day, teachers impact the shaping of the future for better or for worse through his or her interactions with students. I believe that if one does not have the heart or stomach for politics, the best way to help shape our country and impact it’s future is by working directly with our youth.