My {Honest but Late} Truth About Teaching

I'm going to get all sorts of honest with you today for my (late) link up with Sunny Days in Second Grade. It's a long one so hold on!

Unlike many teachers who have always known what that they wanted to teach, I got into the game a little later. Looking back now as I wrap up college and head towards my first year teaching, I wish I'd been as luck as others. I don't come from a line of college grads and knew very little of college in K-12th grade so not much thought was put into. Somewhere along the line I found out I was pretty good at math and science and kind of stuck with those subjects. Around middle school someone threw out the idea of being an engineer. All I needed was to be good at math and science in school and then I would be an officer in the Navy, become an engineer and make lots of money and have an easy life. That was pretty much what my plan was all of high school so I took advance science, math, and engineering classes and managed to float my way through without much effort.

Eventually though, my "plan" slowly started to unravel when I realized that my goals were hard to achieve when I had no passion for them. My goals turned into these empty ideas that I was honestly indifferent about but with out many other options I trudged along. At some point my freshman year of college I found myself resenting much of what I thought was the plan for my life. Needless to say the transition into education was not an easy one. I was in a terrible place feeling like I'd failed because I know longer wanted what I thought I was "supposed" to want.

My sophomore year of college, the only thing I seemed to enjoy was my Work Study job at a HeadStart. I even adjusted my class schedule so I only took night classes and could be in the classroom for the entire morning preschool class. The 12 preschoolers I worked with fascinated me and working with them felt so natural and intuitive. I started running out of general education courses to take so I took some child development classes and fell absolutely in love with education. I had found something I was passionate about; children. As I learned more about education, I felt like I couldn't not become a teacher! (Like my double negative?)

I discovered all these opinions and ideas I had about child development and education that I hadn't even know I was so passionate about until confronted with them. It wasn't even simple that I wanted to work with children, it was that I wanted to be a part of improving children's lives.