i love teaching profession essay

Six reasons why I love being a teacher

Do you have a passion for inspiring and educating young learners? Teaching is one of the rewarding career options available to you with a degree in Education. A career in teaching will provide you with the opportunity to instil knowledge and make and impact on the upcoming generation. 

We spoke to Catherine Hemingway, a final year BA (Hons) Primary Education with QTS student, to find out why she loves being a teacher.

Teaching is really rewarding. It’s satisfying to see children progress both academically and non-academically as rounded people and future citizens. You might not realise it but you are the children’s role model. They have different backgrounds – and some don’t have the role model they need at home – but for that time in their lives you are the one they look to for help and guidance.

I became interested in teaching through helping my dad with sports coaching. The children who came to the athletics club in the morning tended to struggle at school. We got feedback that, since starting doing sport, these children were going on to be more engaged at school in the afternoon and were making more progress than before. I’m now planning my major project for my final year on how exercising in the morning affects children’s attainment.

These are just six of the reasons I love being a teacher:

1. Every child is different

You learn quickly that children don’t fit into stereotypes – the sporty one, quiet one, high achiever etc. It doesn’t end up like that. They all have different backgrounds and you get to see the children grow in all sorts of ways. You can support them with their home life and relationships with peers as well as their academic work – you just have to find a way in with each individual. I had a girl who wouldn’t read but I found out she likes cats so I found her a book with cats in and she loved it! Her dad then started buying her more cat books. Other children have specific needs. When I was at school there were only a few children with recognised special educational needs. Now there’s much more awareness, you can have 10 pupils in a class with different needs that you need to support in some way to help them make progress.

2. You learn from teaching

One of the things I Iike about teaching in primary schools is teaching the range of subjects. I’ve never had one subject that I loved or excelled at more than the others, so primary teaching has allowed me to develop in all the subject areas I have to teach. This is what I try to pass one to the children; you don’t want them to think they’re only good in one subject. It also means I never get tired of a curriculum area and that I’m developing my knowledge in a range of areas all the time. You can’t be an expert in everything all the time so you have to go away and research things before you teach it to the children. Teaching also keeps my technology skills up-to-date as schools are using new technology all the time. For example, the children sometimes use iPads for tests now, which is helpful in making tests less scary – plus I get instant data back to see how they’re doing. One of the schools I was in during my first year even has a 4D classroom!

3. You really do make a difference

You get wins with both individuals and the whole class all the time but sometimes you can really transform a child’s life. During one placement, a child had just joined the school from an African tribe. He didn’t speak much English and communicated by pointing. He was in Year 5 but was being given phonics classes with much younger children, which really upset him. The school were doing it so he learnt the basics but it wasn’t helping due the way he felt. I started working with him on a one-to-one basis (when I was supporting the class teacher) and made sure the work I gave him was at his level but still related to the lesson (when I was teaching), rather than a separate activity. He also got sent in from playtime regularly because he was frustrated with not being able to communicate with his classmates so I also did extra reading with him. These small changes had a big impact and his mum even started asking for extra work for him to do at home. By the end of my placement two months later, he was speaking and writing in full sentences and made progress in maths. When I left he gave me handshake and said, “Thank you very much, Miss.” It was so lovely!

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4. The children can surprise you!

You can’t not smile when you’re working with children. The comments they come out with can amuse and surprise you! They range from being told I’m like someone’s mum, pupils who think I’m really young, those who ask how many children I have even though I’m only 20, to those who tell me they love me and bring in cards. I even had one girl who would actively give me feedback on my lessons – for good and bad! But feedback from their point of view is actually really useful to help me to reflect on why a particular lesson was or wasn’t successful. The children are pretty open and honest generally as I also get compliments (and criticism) about my outfits!

5. Every day is different

As the children are all different and we teach a variety of subjects, every day is different. For example, you could be working on a cross-curricular project about the rainforest, which might cover skills and knowledge in English, science, art, geography and history, but you equally might have a parent helper in for the day, take the children swimming or even have an external visitor in, such as a sports agency or supermarket to engage the children about healthy lifestyles. We get involved in things like World Book Day and even had a maths day at my first placement school. We all dressed up as a number on the side of a die and did fun activities that related to real life. Maths can be a subject they either love or hate but the day really helped to them understand why it’s useful and definitely improved their perception.

6. Schools are communities

Primary schools are usually small so everyone knows each other. You work as a team and can support each other. In larger primary schools I’ve seen the teachers work as team, having the one who is strongest in English, for example, take the higher achievers in that subject; this plays to the teachers’ strengths and helps the pupils’ progress. If you’re a community it’s not like work. For me it’s more like going back to school myself as we’re learning from each other and learning from the senior leadership team. You share ideas and can work together to implement them rather than being competitive like some industries. This follows all the way from the Head to teaching assistants; everyone has a valuable role to play in the school community.

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What My Professors Never Told Me About Teaching

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When I was in graduate school studying to teach English/language arts, my professors taught me about the value of student choice and the profound impact of a worthwhile text in the hands of a hungry learner. They taught me about classroom setup and assessments and the power of ceaseless positivity. Valuable lessons, of course, but weightless compared with the real challenges of teaching.

A decade in, here is what I wish they had taught me:

Your work is necessary—but it is work.

You will not be properly thanked, through money or otherwise. You did not go into it for thanks and you will not get thanks out of it.

You will sometimes forget that you are working, when a lesson is engaging and you have kids who are really interested in their learning, but mostly you will cram the grueling labor of mind growing into inedible chunks, force feeding, and begging for something— anything —to take.

You will question the necessity of the work, especially when nearly everyone believes they could do the job better than you can, and what’s more, that you should do it for less money and more hours because the love alone should be enough to sustain you.

While the work is necessary, it does not necessarily have to be yours. Only you will know when the work, for you, has ended. It is OK to let it go.

You will rely on your routine.

Alarm. Snooze. Alarm. Snooze. Alarm. Rise. You will park in the same spot and you will become irrationally irritated when a new car parks over the line. You will appreciate the breaks—you will need them. You will learn to schedule your restroom breaks by a bell and you will learn to eat breakfast and lunch at unholy hours.

You will know the waxing and waning moon by the moods of your students. You will come to dread the day before Thanksgiving and the week before Christmas, though of course, you will need the time to recover. You will limp your way through spring to summer break—which you will adamantly inform the uniformed public is not paid vacation but deferred-pay vacation. You need this summer break to soak up sun and energy for another year.

You will feel lonely and insignificant.

Most of your time will be spent in cinder block cells, in markedly prisonlike edifices. Sometimes, the teachers in your same content area and grade will be called your ‘team,” but, ultimately, you are a team of one. You will see yourself lined up as a series of statistics next to the names of students you have only barely begun to know and you will be asked to account for those numbers. You will doubt yourself and you will wonder if you have made a mistake.

Decisions will be made about you and for you. You will realize you are mostly a customer service representative. You will have books plucked from your hands with spines unbent, words unseen. Everyone who only has a passing knowledge of your school will have an opinion on what should happen inside.

You will be called into meetings over and again asking you to remember your purpose and to love away the pain of your chosen career. If you are ever angry, you will be asked to reevaluate your values.

You will find solace in your colleagues.

Without them, you will not survive. You will laugh at yourself as you lament the good old days with the people on your same journey. You will not like all of them. You will find yourself envious of those who love and are loved, of those who leave work at work and don’t think about it until the next school day, of those who are seen. You will despise yourself for this envy, which you will understand is the thief of joy.

But you will also have your work to thank for introducing you to your best friends—you will never have found them otherwise. And you will need to find them. You will need to find joy, because time is finite, and all of your joy cannot be reserved for after hours and weekends.

You will find this joy in the people beside you. They will be your lifeline and, though this work will always feel impossible, they will make it a little more possible.

You will be sowing seeds in the dark.

You will spend about 108 hours with each new student. Of these 108 hours, your time will be divided across a number of tasks: taking attendance, conducting safety drills, monitoring assemblies, escorting students to various locations, mediating their disputes, redirecting their outbursts, and, occasionally, teaching. Interspersed in the bursts of teaching the content, you will learn about your students’ lives and wonder who they will become after you.

You will laugh with them or when they are not looking (if you are the stoic and serious type), cry with them, grieve with them.

You will experience great joy and, sometimes, immense anger with them. You are human, and, as you will quickly learn, this is the most human of all the professions.

Occasionally, you will hear from them years later, but mostly you will not see the effects of whatever you have—or haven’t—done.

You are more powerful than you think.

You are. People will tell you that you are not. Parents will tell you that you are not. Legislators and other politicians, superintendents and principals, and even other teachers will devalue you. You will learn to let them. You will see the evidence of your worth and you remember what they do not: When COVID closes the classrooms, they will not be able to continue their lives without you. They will need you more than you ever need them.

You will be encouraged to forget this in favor of “remembering your why.” Instead, remember your power.

You know you will not see the fruits of your labor, but you know your labor will bear fruit. You have not toiled to see the earth you have tended go barren. You will develop an infinite capacity for hope. When all else fails (and it will all fail again and again), this hope must sustain you.

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