Why Do I Teach?

Teaching as a profession doesn't have a lot to recommend it these days. The public has a pretty jaded view of teachers (amazing, considering the ability to read is almost universally passed on through teachers), and politicians see teachers, and other government service employees, and new scapegoats for their own overspending habits. Teaching is one of the few professions I know of where, even though required to be degreed to enter, there is now no job security once you have passed your probationary period; the "tenure" of the past has been almost universally assaulted in the great political attack on the profession. Teaching is a profession where your union can negotiate conditions of employment for you, but has no power to object to negotiation in bad faith, and no legal recourse to the strike, work action, or any other means to attempt to enforce the rights of its members at the table. So why would anyone, in this current unfavorable environment, want to teach?

I've done pretty much everything else I wanted to do. I was a Navy man, submarines, nuclear propulsion plant supervisor. I saw some exciting times, some terrors, some great ports. There had to be something more...

I was an environmental engineer in the early days of environmental engineering, when there were no schools, no degree programs. We came from chemistry, mechanical, nuclear backgrounds. We broke ground in how to write the permits, regulations, and laws that keep our water, air, and land clean, clear, and unpolluted. Those were heady days as well, much of it by the seat of the pants; some mistakes were made, most of them overprotective. Companies were being bought and sold, went in and out of business, exciting times...

I worked for the state putting Veterans back to work. I got to meet a lot of business owners, had to figure out what they wanted in employees, and tried to shoehorn people into jobs. I learned a great deal about small business and jobs, what caused hiring, what didn't. I put lots of fellows to work, but not near as many as I would have liked...

So now I look back, and wonder what the young people have to look forward to. They will need tools, not just a diploma, but some skills, people skills, some inside knowledge about how things work out there. I have some of that knowledge, and I have an interest in sharing it with our youth.

I see the examples young people have on television and in movies; they want to be rock stars, or sports stars, or drug dealers. And why not, our media lionizes all of those? They are buried in images of older men that they think are what they should aspire to... but they shouldn't. The images that popular media spews forth are the worst examples, shallow, stingy, uncaring. Almost as bad are the current crop of politicians, with the "I've got mine, to Heck with you" mantra.

I teach because I want to be an example of what a man in today's world can be for these youths. I want them to see someone that isn't a media cutout, a sports star, a drug dealer. I want them to see a person with a full, successful life, not driven by greed or want of monetary excess. If I can do that, and also teach them a little bit about science, then I will consider this, most likely my last career in life, to have been a good one.

It is said, "find a job you love, and you won't work a day in your life."

MMG