I generally spend most of my time with other people. At school, I have very little time alone and at home, I'm generally with my family. So when I have a few minutes to myself, I get to think, and I can sometimes get a good idea or two. One of my thoughts while cutting the grass this summer was to integrate something a little different into my blog this year. Every now and then, I plan to insert a continuing series on what motivates our staff to be an educator. I'm going to kick the series off with my own story and throughout the year, I plan to interview teachers in our building to capture theirs and share them.
I grew up in a blue-collar family. Most of the men have a history of military service and then moved to a specialized trade and I was on that track as well. Even as teachers recognized that I could be college-bound, I still found it hard to stray from the family path. Military service would lead to college which would just provide the skills for a more specialized trade. I couldn't see much past the path that I was on and did not have anyone in my family that had attended college that could provide me with a different perspective.
It was my teachers that changed my perspective. These were the teachers that pushed me to take different classes, talked to me like I was their own child, and coached me to be a better student and person. I valued their opinions so much that when they told me that I would be a good teacher, I immediately thought that they had to be right. Blue-collar families don't usually have the means to put their children through college so when a teacher told me about the NC Teaching Fellows scholarship, I was hooked. While I originally wanted to teach math, I changed my mind my senior year to history. Those same teachers helped me earn the Teaching Fellows scholarship along with a few others that made my first years free. And when I got into legal trouble with a few weeks left to graduate, they came and supported me again and convinced the powers that be that I should keep my scholarships.
It turned out that these influential teachers were right. I was a much better college student because I had found something that I was truly interested in. I liked motivating students and I liked pushing them to be something that they may not have known existed. I do this job because I still owe those teachers. They literally changed my life and probably the life of my children as well. Every new degree or accolade that I have ever received is because an influential teacher guided me to where I am. I can still hear many of their voices in my head when I have that time to reflect and think about problems.
Why do I do this job? Because I am still paying back the wisdom, guidance, and opportunity that was given to me.
