Why We Teach, 2019

Only a few years ago, the “office humor” that circulated among educators on the Internet went something like this: “You know you’re a teacher if…” 

The ensuing list of indicators would have made anyone outside the profession wonder why on earth a person would become a teacher in the first place, never mind staying on year after year. The list highlighted job features like these:

• no social life from August to June
• high susceptibility to chicken pox, colds, sore throats, and flu 
• a compulsion to put grades on grocery lists, telephone messages, and junk mail

But office humor these days is dark. It’s more than simple comic relief. Teacher salaries are lower than ever and the workload itself is greater: more students, more classes, more documentation, more standardized tests. Snowplow parents, the glare of the media, and public shaming on Facebook. Fewer substitutes, less funding for programs, and even less money for teachers. All of it is true. All of it is anguishing.

So why in the world would anyone become a teacher? Why would they stay on?

Because there’s another story.

• It’s the young woman whose resume landed her a full-time job–the resume you gave up your lunch period to help her compose.
• It’s the math students you’ve driven to Saturday competitions and the art students you’ve entered in contests so they can test their strengths and hone their skills.
• It’s the “struggler” who didn’t like to read, the one you worried about and stayed after school to help, who finally confessed when he finished a novel you suggested, “This is the first book I’ve ever read cover to cover.  I really liked it, too.”
• It’s the girl who said, “I didn’t have any friends until I joined your club!
• It’s the student whose lines you listened to over and over and over again until you could recite them yourself–but the play was a success and the student was a star.
• It’s the ones you’ve stayed up all night for at the after-prom and the lock-in. 
• It’s the ones you’ve monitored early in the morning on “study table”–it kept them eligible for sports and it kept them in school.
• It’s the ones you’ve written college recommendations for and hugged  when they told you the good news: “I’ve been accepted!”
• It’s the ones you’ve helped in the library when they “couldn’t find anything.”
• It’s the boy who said, “You made me work.  You taught me how to study–and now I’m going to college!”  This is the boy you agonized about on the weekends and lost sleep over at night because no one at home seemed to be helping.
• It’s the ones who’ve come back from Middle School to say, “You really did know what skills I’d need in sixth grade!”
• It’s the children for whom you’ve been a stand-in parent on Family Nights.
• It’s the ones you’ve taught how to run computer programs–students who weren’t even in your classes.
• It’s the ones for whom you’ve paid the field trip charge.
• It’s the ones to whom you’ve given lunch money.
• It’s the ones you’ve bought winter coats.
• It’s the children upon whose doorsteps you’ve left holiday gifts–and then driven quickly away.
• And it’s the light in their eyes and the lift in their voices when they learn how to read, or convert fractions, or understand covalence, or give a speech, or shoot a basket, or play the clarinet, or fix a car’s transmission…  

 Ask any educator: stories like these are the sustaining force in our professional lives, the compensation for those skipped lunches, sleepless nights, constant criticism, and endless piles of paperwork that consume the evenings and weekends. 

It’s the kids.  They’re the reason why we teach and the reason why we stay.