"I Can't See Myself Doing Anything But Teaching"

As of late, we've been rather fortunate in our Ed-Pscyh Monday evening lectures, in having fine members of the Decorah educational community joining us. That trend continued last Monday with three teachers from the Decorah public schools responding to a question-answer session. All three had different teaching backgrounds, but all three explicitly said they couldn't imagine themselves not teaching.

This is truly admirable. I'm sure that with a little self-reflection, I would be able to see that (subconsciously) one of my reasons for wanting to teach was probably in having great teachers who were really passionate about what they're doing. Passion and preparation on the part of the teacher leads to wholesome learning and genuine enthusiasm from students.

However, towards the end of the session, I was tempted to ask them a question a long these lines: Do you ever think that you could do more, or make more of a difference, if you were in a different position? From the perspective of a student who had heard the other groups come to speak their part about education, it was interesting to hear these current teachers say they couldn't imagine doing anything else. A few weeks earlier, the administrators from Decorah told us they hadn't ever thought about doing administrative work before an opportunity was presented to them. The younger teachers told us how they had to take on 2nd (or even 3rd!) jobs to help pay off college loans, get a little ahead in the financial world, and to keep themselves busy. The administrators admitted that the increase in salary was certainly not a deterring factor in their decision to move from their teaching post.

So, as honorable a profession as teaching may be (in what way could you alter and improve the lives of young people more immediately?), are there better or more broad-sweeping ways that one could help forward the education of young people? Teachers, of course, will never be replaceable, but it's likely that the efforts of school administrators or those individuals who progress education legislation go unnoticed. So when teachers say, "I Can't See Myself Doing Anything But Teaching," because they always want to help kids, maybe they should consider what other ways, outside the scope of being a teacher, they could actuate a positive impact.

Yes, I whole-heartedly want to be a teacher once my time at Luther College is up. But discussing educational legislation (NCLB), reviewing new data on successful teaching methods and strategies, and the consistent bad news that test scores in America are falling below more and more other countries, has forced a realization in me that maybe my efforts might be placed best elsewhere. Education Reform. Although the young academic world likely has strong and capable advocates working on our behalf, I feel that the lack of significant improvement is evidence that their efforts aren't completely successful. There are so many factors working against minimally (let alone profoundly) changing the public education system in America, and much of the stigma against change is held in societal norms, which is extremely hard to modify. But this is why we must work even harder to fix the system, to keep our graduates marketable in an ever-shrinking world.

So some teachers "...Can't See (themselves) Doing Anything But Teaching."
- I can definitely see myself teaching, but I can also see myself making a difference for my students by working to improve the system determining their success.