Did you recently graduate from teachers college? Determined to get a permanent job so you can “mold some minds” ? Or maybe, you are becoming a teacher because you are not really sure what to do with your life?  You figure, teachers have summers off. You like golfing, so maybe attending teachers college is for you. Perhaps, you have had a teacher who inspired you and you want to emulate what they did for you. Whatever the reason, you have thought long and hard about becoming a teacher and you have decided to begin the journey to share ‘pearls of wisdom with the world.’  

Teacher. When you look up the definition for the word in any random dictionary, you can view a list of synonyms : instructor, schoolmaster, preceptor, tutor, professor, pedagogue, educationist, educator, school mistress. These words are very unclear descriptions of what really happens on a day to day basis. Often the instruction for teachers comes from the little wizards sitting in class saying things that either shock you or touch your heart.

My blog is not full of pedagogical facts that will help you organize and teach a lesson. Nor is it a series of lectures to review the history of teaching.  It is the stories I and some of my teaching colleagues have experienced in their lifetime as educators. Some are hard to believe, while others will make you cry.  I have changed the names of everyone involved, to keep things ethical. If the story sounds like something you experienced then let’s just say you live in a parallel dimension to me.

After I graduated from university, I started working at Olympia Business Machines.  No offence to anyone working in the field, but I was bored to death. I learned very quickly that I could never do a full time job that required me to sit at a desk all day. I stayed at this job for 6 months and then I saw a newspaper ad. Yes, I said newspaper. The job was for an assistant at a daycare centre.  I had a Bachelor of Arts Degree, but I didn’t have any qualifications, on paper, to teach children. To clarify, I had taught dance to children from ages 3-12 at four different recreation centres, so working with children was not a foreign, or fearful concept. Do not laugh, some people find children very unpredictable and scary. I applied, I went to the interview, I was hired and I was inspired.  The sad point was that I would earn significantly less than when I worked in accounts receivable. Well, I loved working at this daycare. It was a special place because it allowed me to observe other educators working with children. I learned so much from the experience and I discovered that my passion was teaching. I began to work towards that goal. This is one story that made me realize that I had a proclivity for the profession.