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Is it All for the Love of Teaching?

It is generally believed that teachers are supposed to love what they do and sacrifice for their job. We teachers are asked to spend our days educating other people’s children in everything from letters and numbers to Latin and neurons. We wipe noses, tie shoelaces, replace forgotten lunch money, and even console youngsters when they are faced with the harsh realties of the world. We share our wisdom and our wit, we entertain and we enlighten. Teachers are Homo Universalis or the Renaissance Men and Women of our times. And for some children we are the only responsible adults they will ever know. Our job is a diverse and complicated one for which we are expected to volunteer our extra time and dedicate our passion for learning while working at a “cost of living” wage.

Most teachers I know do not teach for the paycheck, the benefits, or the schedule. They teach for the love of teaching. They love working with students, they love spending their days in the classroom and not the office, and they love how they sleep so well at night knowing that their days’ efforts were not spent in vain.

Yet there are days and times when I reflect on this job and career that I love and all I want to do is pick up my ball and just go home. If it weren’t for my families need for food, clothing, and housing, I might even just outright quit. What makes me so frustrated are the sometimes bizarre ways that schools are run, and the many times backwards, inefficient, and illogical way education itself operates.

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What I most resent is the attitude of some people that teachers should just do what we are told and love what we do just because we get to do it. The ignorance of non-educators about the depth and complexity of teaching others is mind-boggling. The attitude that any adult who has ever held the hand of a child can teach them to read, write, sing or even calculus is insulting. But we the teachers all know better.

The fact is that we are willing to sacrifice for our jobs because we do love teaching. We know the joys of those moments when we realize that in a small but significant way we have changed the lives of our students. Sometimes it through teaching a fact or equation that opens the door for further understanding for a student. Other times it in sharing a life experience that ensures the child that things really will be Ok. Every once in a while it is having our own lives changed by the sincerity or honesty and caring of one of our pupils.

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