So you want to be a teacher?
Well, let me tell you a few things that they don't tell you.
No, it's not the money, it's not the student issues, or the parent issues, or dealing with admin who have forgotten what it's like to be in the classroom, you're told all that when you're going through college or at holidays if you have relatives that teach.
All the negatives you will just have to experience for yourself and you know full well what you're getting into.
However.
There are some things that they either don't tell you or you're not prepared for when you become a teacher.
Some of your students go home to horrific lives.
They're hungry, thirsty, emotionally neglected, physically neglected and you might just be the only person that shows consistent love for them. And when you find out the personal stories of some of your students, it will hurt you.
Some of your students are addicted to drugs and alcohol.
In 25 years of teaching, I still forget that this is the story. I see them as children who haven't had to deal with the horrors of addiction yet, but you'd be wrong to think that.
If you do the teaching job for too long, some of your students will die or commit suicide.
It's awful, but if you're doing your job correctly, it will be something that hurts you ever time it happens.
Some of your students will be involved in custody hearings, have their homes burn down, or lose everything.
As a teacher, and if you're doing it right, it will hurt your soul every time.
As a teacher, you will be dealing with life issues as well and those students will get you through some of the hardest times of your life, if you're doing it right.
Lastly, all of your students will remember you and you will remember them from time to time.
They will commit suicide, die, be incarcerated, be addicted, divorced, lose their own children, get cancer, be abused, be the abuser, commit murder and be murdered.
And it never gets easier to hear these things.
But....
Those current and former students will go on to do successful things and they will include you as inspiration and you may never know how to take it.
Take the good as you take the bad...into your very being because the good will more than equal the things that are negative, but the negative are so heavy.
So you want to be a teacher?
Know this if you're doing it right it's a caring lifestyle that will affect you daily, monthly and yearly.
And the things that will keep you up at night will not be lesson plans, lack of money (maybe) or admins that are doing the new data based educational "thing".
It will be the love of your students and how what affects them, affects you.
For the rest of your life.
