I started teaching for the light bulb, but stay for NWP

Recently William Zhou asked “why teach” on Edudemic and I decided this week’s blog post would be my response to that question. It is a good question to ask. Recent years have been tough for the teaching profession and teachers are leaving the profession in droves. Some like Gerald Conti are retiring earlier than they expected because they no longer recognize the profession they love. Others, like Jordan Kohanim, leave the profession after only a few years because they feel defeated by the repeated message that teachers don’t matter.

I admit the conditions of teaching are bad and while I have faith that the pendulum will eventually begin swinging in the other direction I don’t see any short-term improvements. Budgets are still tight and the folks who believe all learning and teaching can be summed by data points (they are wrong, just for the record, see previous link) are still in the ascendance. But the truth is that I did not get into teaching for the great money (stop laughing), summers off (seriously, stop laughing), and short work days (if you don’t stop laughing, you are going to hurt yourself).

I became a teacher because I knew from my own experience the difference that teachers make in the lives of their students.

Read more about why I teach on my Metawriting blog.