Why Teach?

    "Why teach?" you might ask. Well, teaching is quite frankly an intimidating career but only because it requires a soft heart filled with patience and a tough mind filled with perseverance. This responsibility is what motivated me to become a teacher from the very start, let's flashback to my sixth-grade year. At this point in my education, I had experienced a good mixture of the admirable teachers who made me excited to learn and the loathsome teachers that made me dread even walking into the school building itself. Through these experiences, I developed an immense desire to become what I thought of as a well-rounded teacher. My idea of a well-rounded teacher was a teacher that could not only teach in a way that connected all dots and came full circle in classroom learning but also the teacher that uplifted their students and had genuine compassion for them. The keyword there is genuine. Flash forward to now, I have now collected a plethora of personal life changes, heartbreaks, and family grievances in my life and have had to go through all of them while juggling school. From middle school to college, I have had the same need, a teacher that is genuine. 

    A teacher that is genuine sounds rather broad, but I promise you that it incorporates every aspiration I have as I move into this career path. I want to bring in a raw and vulnerable presence with my students. In order to create a safe and comforting environment for my students, I have to be genuine. Of course, this involves boundaries, as any classroom should and will have, but I know from personal experience how important it is for a student to know they are understood and welcomed in school. Another goal that stems from that aspired word is to be thoughtful in how I teach. I believe that the way to be genuine in teaching is to not be selfish. I aim to take time to teach content with students who are struggling to understand and to never shortcut a topic with my students. Mrs. Dagnell, a middle school teacher on TikTok, posted a video about why it's okay to get off-topic in the classroom and I loved her take on this. She explained that student-inspired off-topic conversations initiate responsiveness from the students and create a link between social lives and the educational content in lesson plans. "Why teach?" because someone needs to step up and be genuine.