The Top Five Surprising Reasons Why I Love Teaching

Jon Short - 2008 Fellow & Special Education Teacher

Below are the top five reasons why I love being a teacher that I could never have forseen:

#5.  It’s never, ever predictable: Everything in a school is always evolving, and I’ve learned to sort of just relax and let the currents of the school push me back and forth. I may have planned to get through adding fractions by the end of the week, but two days after starting lessons, my students still haven't fully grasped what a numerator is. Alternatively, I remember planning a week to cover a new reading skill, but my pretests showed that my students had it down with 100% accuracy.  And when I'm not teaching my fellow teachers might need to pull me aside to ask for advice or a student bursts into my room for help with anything from school work to personal problems - both it seems just as I’m about to dive into my foot-long sub sandwich. And so I’ve learned to started every day with the mantra, “Okay school, gimme what you got!”

#4.  The OOOOOHHHHHH moment: When teaching, there’s this magical moment when a student moves from complete confusion to complete understanding. I call it the OOOHHH moment. The last time this happened was a couple weeks ago, working with a student who had trouble counting. I’d tried everything, and when I finally found the strategy that worked, he shouted “OOOOHHHH, now I get it!”

#3.  The BIG, BIG office: Well, technically, it’s a classroom. But if you’ve ever wanted an office of immense size, where you can stretch, jog, and lead an afternoon yoga class, a school classroom makes a fine office.  While I may share my office with thirty or so middle school students, after school hours, it’s all mine.

#2.  Missing rush hour: I’m at school by 6:15AM every day. I’ve already started before most people’s alarms go off. And some days, I’m out by 3:30PM. The local news station reports traffic at that time as “smooth and light” and I can’t tell you how great it is to have a seven minute commute.

#1.  A veritable army of students ready willing to work above and beyond: It doesn’t matter how dirty, how boring, or how menial a job is, any one of your students will gladly stay after school to help. My desks and chairs are cleaned daily thanks to two of my students; and whiteboards are washed thanks to two more. I don’t even have to organize my own teaching materials, thanks to two more students. All I have to do is play music while they work, and my room sparkles for the next day and the kids are happy to make their school and classroom a great place to be.