Committing to Teaching
Committing to a teaching career - should you do it, or not? What's it really about, teaching?
There are a lot of myths about teaching - that the long holidays make it a lazy profession being one - and there are lots of side issues, like government initiatives you have to follow through.
But if you are thinking about teaching, you need to committed to one thing and one thing only: the children. Everything else flows from that. Can you talk to children? Can you make them laugh? Do they trust you? Can you understand what it's like to live in a world you don't understand and that does not understand you? Can you learn from them? Can you learn about people and life from talking to children?
Teaching is about the children. Teaching is a commitment to children's learning, inspiration and happiness. You can affect a child's life profoundly in such simple ways, such unexpected ways - and you can do it for good or for evil - that unguarded criticism can make a permanent difference to a child's attitude to learning.
So - if you are thinking about making a commitment to teaching, you should be able to commit to the cause of improving children's lives. This means you need to work through the cries, the screams, even the angry swearing at times - because children are human beings and not toys, not dolls: their lives are full of the same fears and hurts, only they don't know how to express them or how to work through them. That's what you are for. That's what you will do. You will help them through those times, working as best as you can to produce something positive.
Still committed to teaching?
Then you can deal with the other commitments. Parents can be very hard work indeed, but they know when you are on their child's side. You need to forge a partnership with them. This is just people skills. If you can't cope with unhappy adults, complaints, demands - then you should steer clear of teaching and any other interactive profession.
Can you be enthusiastic and motivated? Even with the examinations, government targets, gradings, assessments and all the other garbage teachers are expected to deal with, if you are naturally enthusiastic or can develop your enthusiasm for something easily, then a commitment to teaching can be a light one. Do you get excited by new things? Do you love learning, yourself? Is it something you look forward to doing? Do you, in short, have a commitment to it?
If you are committed to something, you work hard at it. Be aware of this: the payoff for the long holidays and job security is that you are expected to be enthusiastic and active all day at work, all the time you are with the children. Then you are expected to work most evenings and to some extent weekends as well. There will be events - plays, sports fixtures, trips - that will take up days, evenings, weekends both in term time and in the holidays. If you are committed to teaching, you will need to be committed to these extra-curricular events as well.
Teaching is hard work. Rewarding work, but hard work. Commit to it, and commit to losing your social life for months at a time.
But think about it: do you want to be remembered in twenty, thirty, forty years' time? Do you want to be the person who inspired someone to make something of their life? Do you want to have that influence and make the world, however slightly, a better place?
If so, then be committed to teaching.
