Why I Became a Teacher

If someone were to ask me why I became a teacher, I would have to confess that it happened by attrition.  It wasn't a calling.  I wasn't drawn to the profession more than any other endeavor except that I was guided in that direction, in a way, by my parents.  It was a "known".  My parents were teachers, as was my grandmother, at one time.

We do our children a disservice by expecting them to be able to commit to a life's work by age 18 when they graduate from high school.  Unless one has a particular passion, asking him/her to take a track to the future at that age is just ridiculous.  What does one know about life and/or self at that age?  The human brain doesn't stop growing until age 25, and the last part to mature is the part that helps make decisions.  What could go wrong?  A lot!

In my family, it was a "given" that I would go to college.  By the end of high school, I was adrift on a sea of confusion.  I was in love with a fellow from Wisconsin.  Had been since the summer before 8th grade.  I looked into Wisconsin colleges thinking I might get a little closer to him by going there...but...my mother told me we couldn't afford out-of-state tuition (something I knew nothing about), so that notion got quickly squelched.  I didn't do any college visitations.  I applied to ONE college, Illinois State University--my parents' old Alma Mater--and was accepted.  So much for where I would go.  Now, what to study while there?

At its founding, ISU was ISNU--Illinois State Normal University.  (The town that grew up around it was named Normal, IL.)  A "normal" university was a teacher-training institution, although it had grown way past simply that by the time I was ready to attend.  (1965)  What to study?  What to be??

Honestly, I didn't have any passions.  My only real goal in life was to be a devoted wife and loving mother.  To create a nurturing family home.  But, true to the times, it was also obvious that I needed a career with which to take care of myself in the absence of a husband to take care of me.  (This is a reflection of my parents' generation.  I was literally raised with the notion that a woman should have a career to fall back on should something happen to her bread-winner husband.)  I remember a conversation that my mother and I had where she told me that Secretary, Nurse, or Teacher were respectable professions for a woman.  I believed her.

I didn't want to be somebody's secretary, although I figured I'd be good at it.  Nurse?  Does that mean I would have to give shots to patients?  No, that won't do.  What's left?  BINGO!  I decided to be a teacher, not because I thought I would want to but because it was comfortable and respectable.  At the very least, I figured maybe I could do it just a bit better than my own teachers had.  I wanted to make content interesting and relatable to contemporary students.  But what to teach?

I had been a four-year A-student in French in high school.  I considered being a French interpreter at the UN.  Yeah...how often does that happen?  My first semester in college at ISU, I took the lowest level French class that was available to me--French Novels--and spent the entire semester with upper-classmen who had studied in France and were much more fluent than I.  My nights were focused in French vocabulary dictionaries.  I was lost.  I felt somewhat betrayed by the highs I felt by being the best of the French students in high school, only to discover that throwing me in with the real world showed how totally deficient I was.

My whole passion in my senior year of high school was music and theater.  Loved it.  Was good at it.
Before I entered college, I gave up the notion of studying music because I understood that it would then become work, not fun.  I could read music but understood that music students had to be proficient in one instrument or another.  I could play piano, sort of.  My understanding of scales and chords and keys was extremely rudimentary.  I quickly gave up studying music as a thing.

Entered college as a theater major, with English as a minor.  (I was also good in English in high school, although I had no real verve for it.  I mean, EVERYBODY speaks English, yes?  Where is the passion in that?)  In one class during my college freshman year, a theater instructor asked which of us didn't have any scholarships.  I raised my hand, as did others.  It seems that there were talent grants available for theater students that weren't being used.  I got one just by nature of being in that class.  Didn't have to do a thing to have it.  It gave me a tuition break.  I liked that part, and so did my parents.

As it happened, however, I became disenchanted with theater.  I was only interested in the acting part.  Couldn't have cared less about the technical parts, although the technical parts were those about which I had no clue.  What I didn't know then, but soon came to know, was that MOST high schools in Illinois didn't have a drama department or even a real stage, unless located in the Chicago/suburban area.  Some time in my sophomore year, I switched majors.  English became my major and theater/speech became my minor.  I had a good head start on that.  (What I also didn't comprehend then was that English is a four-year requirement in schools.  I did myself a career favor in flipping my course of study.  I lost my talent grant but gained employability.)

The rest is history.  With many starts and stops, I was able to support my daughter and myself through some rough years via my career.  I don't begin to pretend that it was easy.

In retrospect over many long years, I have come to understand that I would have been a kick-ass counselor/psychologist.  For reasons beyond my own comprehension, I did better dealing with the challenged students than I did with the ones who were the most like me.  If I had my life to do over again, I'm not sure what I would do differently, but I DO know that I did what I did because that's what I thought I was supposed to do.  Baby Boomers are confused like that.

Carry on!