I never knew, until now

Walking around with a stressful mind, today I couldn’t help but think about teaching. And what it means to really love to teach. Is it something in you that makes you want to help students understand concepts that you can only hope they can imbibe meaningfully, given the physical and mental capabilities of their adolescent bodies? Or is it the fact that, as a teacher, you will be touching their lives, possibly in more ways than academic (like perhaps inspire them to reach their own personal goals or to change their way of being for the better. The word ‘role-model’ comes to mind, but it’s the one that they also hate when she gives out tests, homeworks and quizzes)? In other words, what motivates teachers to teach?

Still being in my infancy stage of learning the ways of teaching (more like conception), I have suddenly realized that I don’t even know why I decided to be an English teacher. The surface reasons mainly drove around the idea of having paid summer vacations, but now I find that something else had compelled me to the teaching field. And yet I can’t put a finger on it. It’s that deep inside me; I can’t even find the answer – my answer.

I must keep in mind that just because I love English doesn’t mean I love to teach it – or do I? I guess, for the time being, my answer to the question of why I wanted to be an English teacher, will have to suffice with the fact that teaching was the only thing I could think of, that I could do with an English major degree besides a writer. And not only that, I recalled how, as a high school student, I always wanted to be like certain teachers, whose personality and enthusiasm in their content area (subject) made me want to be like them. I secretly wanted to pass out worksheets and write on the board, but I was always too shy to ask if I could be of some assistance. As I observed more teachers, still as a high school student, I started to grow jealous of how some really awesome teachers were able to enlighten students and make them grow not just in the classroom. I think I just answered my question.

I remember how one sleepless and mind-exhausting night I had gotten out of bed, turned on my light (a clamp lamp usually used in construction sites) and searched through two and a half feet tall piles of papers, looking for a worksheet that listed the requirements for the English major and the English Teacher Education major, as well as a worksheet that listed the requirements for the math major and the Math Teacher Education major.

That’s right, before I had delved in the English field, I was contemplating majoring in math and minoring in astronomy. In fact, throughout my first two years in college, I had no idea what I wanted to do or be for the rest of my life. I knew I loved so many different subjects because I had excelled in most of them in high school and I had grown to be interested in them (like a good read – once you got hooked on it, you’re sold). But then the end of my sophomore year was calling for my declaration of a major and I still wasn’t sure. It took me the whole summer to make up my mind. It was a summer of writing blogs. It was a summer of watching shows, the scripts of which gave me pleasure. It was the summer of day dreams. By my junior year my mind was eighty percent sure: I was going to be an English major. But, I hadn’t made it official, in paper, yet. Despite all the luring creativity that English brought through different media, I was still able to see myself teaching math. I figured that Social Studies included government, and Lord knows I haven’t gotten a clue about politics (and it bores me to death, well most of it, not all) and science was too lab-ish and procedural for my liking. And, although I did well in IB Spanish, I never really took it seriously.

So, sitting at my messed up desk under a yellow light (it seemed so artificial in the dead of night. Man, I really needed a new light bulb), I thought hard of which one I could see myself teaching – math or English. I remember only hearing my breathing, the crickets, a persistent and dull ringy noise from the lamp and my clock ticking, as I was hearing my thoughts run like a mad man through my mind, scratching fibers. I blame all these factors for my headache that middle of the night. Squinting my eyes as they were stinging (always indicative of a lack of sleep), I pictured myself in slacks and a collared shirt, up at the board. First I wrote an quadratic equation, asking students to find the roots. Then I saw myself writing questions like “How can you relate to Holden Caufield? Can you relate? Why or why not? Please give examples.” Did I want to work with symbols and figures and word problems for the rest of my life, or did I want to imagine and come up with thoughts, literary analysis and inevitably, essays? To be honest, I found deeper meaning in the latter and so that’s what I chose.

I also chose English because I had realized that you can never concretely be wrong or right, unlike in math. I’m sayin’ subjectivity could either kill you or raise you, but with sound evidence, you’ll have the benefit of the doubt, rest assured.

And I wanted to be different. Most of my family and relatives are in the science/health science fields or business/math/economics fields and I wanted to break that chain and take what Robert Frost calls, “the road not taken.” Despite my mom’s yearnings for my being a nurse and my dad’s yearnings for my being an accountant, I hooked up with my creative side, married it and became Mrs. English major. And, conventional and conservative though they are, they supported me. Thank you, both.

But you should teach Math, you’ll make more money and they need more math teachers now-a-days, so a job will be easy to find. Yeah, or you should do special education, you’ll make more money, for sure. That’s what I initially and immediately encountered at least once or twice a week, from others, whenever I went around with my dad to his errands or meeting with people he had to see. You know, I never really thought of the money. I thought of the pleasure I would get. So I was selfish, yes, but in a different and determined way. A healthier way? I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. I hope so. But then how would it be healthier?