Reflections on my purpose as a teacher

My vision of myself as a fantastic teacher is that my students are excited to come to class, even if language arts isn’t their favorite subject. I see myself maintaining control while being able to use humor and passion to hook their interest in our current text. Of course, this is my ideal vision.

Loving children means, to me, supporting and assisting them in all their efforts, and getting to know them personally. Wanting to help students means that I teach them all I can about my subject area, about social issues, and give them all my knowledge about operating out in the real world and relating interpersonally, so that they can become successful and compassionate adults. Another reason I want to teach is that I feel a social responsibility to younger generations, and I want to share with them knowledge that I wish had been shared with me when I was in high school, and different ways of looking at the world, and the reasons for people to read books and be able to critically analyze what other people say.

I believe that my desire to make the world a better place will help sustain me when the going gets tough during teaching. I’ve worked some in the corporate world, and some in government, and I’ve found that I feel my best about my job when I believe that I’m helping people. I’m also eternally curious about the lives of other people, and other people’s experiences growing up, and every year I’ll have a new crop of young people growing up in front of me to examine and interview. I feel so much sympathy for teenagers, too, which may help me get through interacting with an intimidating student, if I can remember to feel compassion and empathy for them and whatever their situation may be, and if I can take each difficult interaction and culturally challenging interaction as an opportunity to learn about others, as well as about myself. I also believe that my own innate stubbornness will get me through the difficult times with students and parents, and that I will be able to build good relationships with most teachers and students, if not the administration.

I’m sure there are many, many things I’ll have to learn as a teacher. My own desire to love and help children and the daily necessities of learning about and addressing the ‘substantial diversity of experiences’ are not mutually exclusive, they just mean that as part of my desire to help each and every students, I must learn a greater number of teaching strategies to tailor parts of each lesson to each student. I will also have to develop further my ability to see how my students think and learn, as well as what they know, and what they have the ability to do. This is, of course, the reason why I decided to get my MAT, in the hopes of learning these different strategies, rather than just plunging ahead with a teacher’s license and hoping I could sort things out on my own.

Sojourner Truth’s argument in her “Ain’t I a Woman” speech was that she could do things just as well as white men, white women, and black men, which was a revolutionary point to make at that period in history, because women were considered inferior as a whole, and black men were regarded as hardly even human. So for a black woman, a member of the most oppressed and disregarded minorities, to argue that she could do just as well as any member of society who was considered her superior, was mind boggling to those who heard her in that time. Really, it serves as a rallying cry and a reminder to examine each person on their qualities and abilities, rather than their gender or race, even today.

I believe that the main purpose of schools is to turn students into productive, responsible, empathetic citizens of the world. Other people, of course, would say that the empathy and responsibility is not necessary to be a productive citizen, which is all that much of the United States cares about, but I say that you cannot truly be a good citizen, and that you cannot be a truly good person, if you cannot take responsibility for your choices and their effect on the world, and feel empathy for people who live in completely different situations than yours, as well as people who are similar to you. This purpose relates completely to a diverse society, in fostering understanding and equity, if all people in all situations could look at each other and see a common humanity despite their differences and struggles, or lack of struggle. I want all of my students to be aware of the stratifications of our society, to be able to consider the challenges of each person’s life, and want to correct the inequity that they see in the world around them. As a teacher, this implies that I must break the ignorance of my students, and expose much of the problems of the world to them, which I feel is accomplished partially, in my subject area, by examining many different texts and narratives. When they are feeling confused or overwhelmed or angry, I must be there to support them and help them deal with their increased understanding, and I must encourage them and maintain my hope and ideals along with theirs.

My vision of myself as a teacher has not changed much over the course of this exercise. I still see myself as transferring my passion for my subject to my students, though I suppose I have deepened my own role in my vision, as one who also supports them, gets to know them, and helps them understand the world around them, and my social responsibility to send more responsible and compassionate human beings out of my classroom and into the world.