Why are you a teacher?

In 1999, I was in my first year of graduate school. One of my courses asked me to write a short autobiography with a concentration on why I became a teacher. I thought I could easily do this and come up with a lot of nonsense about being filled with a yearning desire to help younger generations. As I began to write, however, something inside me made me want to play it straight—to write the truth. I would search my soul and find the genuine reason that I became a teacher. I decided that I didn’t want to fudge this one.

I wasn’t long before I realized that I was in trouble. I trawled out the net for reasons why I was a teacher and was pulling up little. I couldn’t say anything like, “I am committed to bringing out the best in children.” or “Teaching is a noble occupation.” I didn’t feel ‘called’ to the teaching profession; I could see myself doing plenty of other jobs. I certainly didn’t feel like teaching was the be all and end all of my life. Therefore, I was afraid I didn’t have any right to be doing it. I was nearly to the point of quitting. If I can’t figure out why I’m a teacher, what’s the point?

Then I remembered the movie, Dead Poets Society. I had seen it in Aukland, New Zealand in 1989. In the empty classroom, I said aloud, “Oh, yeah!” After seeing the movie, I couldn’t sleep for a day because I was thinking about the it’s message. Ten years later, I had not let myself remember this movie because of my pompous, highbrow attitude; I couldn’t admit that a piece of popular culture could play such a major role in setting my life's goals. I wrote one of the few pieces of poetry I still remember. One of the lines is "anvil on the head”—Willie Coyote smacked at the bottom of a cliff. I was forced to stop and recognize the purpose that had just been dropped on me. I saw the movie once, stayed in the theater for the next showing, and went again the next day. I was enchanted by the spell Mr. Keating put on those kids. They took from his teaching the lesson that they should follow their hearts, regardless of external forces that want them to be conservative.

A few months after I had returned from New Zealand, my dad—always the practical one—asked, "What do you see yourself doing in 10 years?"
His question may have been motivated by the fact that I was working in the "Chits" department of the IBP pork slaughtering plant. The Dead Poets' Society memory was smoldering down in my chest somewhere. "I'll be a teacher.” Without thinking much, the answer had risen from my soul and came out my mouth. With all the stimulation that was going on in my life, the conscious flame of purpose calmed, but was never extinguished.