I’ve been a New York City public school teacher for more than fourteen years. Besides relearning how to write a standard five-paragraph essay, there are many reasons to love teaching kids—even after I subtract the low pay and high cost of living in New York City, and find myself relegated to the outer boroughs with four roommates at the age of thirty-five.
True, it’s not glam. Nor is it particularly hip; teachers are not well-respected and are often considered “dumb.” We don’t dress too well (all that chalk), and we bring our leftovers to school for lunch (forget about martini lunches). Yet somehow I manage to love my work. Actually I more than manage. I really love it!
Why? Three reasons: kids are really, really, really funny; the actual act of teaching something is an incredible high; and this job is never, ever boring.
Kids are hilarious. Maybe you have one yourself and you know what I mean. I have 196, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. five days a week, four weeks a month, ten months a year. If I didn’t find them amusing, I’d be bald—literally. I would have pulled out all my hair starting with my eyebrows.
Now back to … where was I? Kids are, by their natures, always finding fun. I think adults forget what fun is, and the kids remind me.
I take this walk to Central Park every Thursday with my ecology class. I have these two sixth-grade boys who play this game they made up. It’s called Sweet and Sour. As they walk by people on the sidewalk, they say, “hi.” Their voices are chipper, not yet broken. If the pedestrian says “hi” back they are sweet; if not, they are sour. These boys keep a tally of sweets versus sours.
It cracks me up to see them saying “hi,” “hi,” “hi,” and after the person walks by, the boys are looking at each other, or me, saying “soouuurrr” or “sweeeeet.”
Teaching is a skill, I firmly believe. Although you may not be a teacher yourself, you certainly have taught someone something, at some time. The moment of “I get it” and knowing you gave that “I get it” to another human being is an incredible feeling. I get to feel that on a daily basis.
Okay, some days are better than others. But every day, there are little triumphs. I help kids learn, and be, and get through their days, almost every day. I myself love to learn, whether it is in the ceramic studio, out with friends, watching The News Hour on PBS, reading Discover magazine, writing a poem or a standard three-paragraph essay. The feeling of understanding something about this wild world is a joy. When I give this to kids, though sharing my experiences and knowledge, I love my job!
The third and final reason I love teaching: it never ceases to bore me. I have been working one job or another since I was thirteen. Babysitting forty hours a week the summer I was thirteen, McDonald’s from fifteen to seventeen, cleaning wealthy people’s second or third unlived-in homes on Ocean Drive, serving up food at drug rehab centers, selling handbags, pulling up weeds, delivering balloons, waiting high-end brunch in Stonington, Connecticut—if there’s a service job, I’ve done it.
When I was an undergrad, I remember having the conscious thought, “I am here because I want a job that’s not boring.” Every day, I arrive at work from Brooklyn and have no idea what may happen. I have never, since my first day teaching in January 1992, been bored at work. And in the hardest times of my life—a breakup, my brother’s death—being in school around kids has been my savior.
In conclusion (a necessary phrase in this standard essay), I love teaching middle school. It’s a great job because kids are hilarious, teaching something is a fabulous feeling, and being in school is never boring. I have not written this to recruit anyone into teaching, but rather as a way of sharing with those who are not in the classroom day after day. There are some joys for all of us in what we do; this is mine.
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