The Joys of Teaching

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops" - Henry Adams

Some people believe teaching is the most important profession in the world. After all, life could not happen without education and progress would never take place. Unfortunately though, teachers are often taken for granted. It can be thankless work and isn't particularly well paid.

But like any job, it's the little things that count. The moment when a light bulb goes off in a student's head and something just clicks. The moment when someone who never showed any interest suddenly has some. Or the moment when a student opens up, asks for extra help and begins to care about their future. These are the moments good teachers' relish in. These are the moments that make their jobs worthwhile.

Of course many teachers appreciate the challenges that occur when arriving at these moments. They enjoy working with young students facing complicated stages of life. They rise to the challenge of figuring out how to deal with a bologna sandwich flying across a classroom and rambunctious students who refuse to do their work. When those students turn around, take interest in a lesson, open up about something that's troubling them, that's a real accomplishment.

Other teachers prefer working with students who are self-motivated. Students who will one day run a country or lead an influential organisation. It sometimes seems hard to believe that adults ever had teachers, that they were ever in grade one learning the alphabet or how to count. Who along the way helped them develop their minds so much? Who taught them to be such eloquent speakers, talented business men, or revolutionary scientists?

Teaching is a wonderful profession and is a transferable skill which is fabulous if you're interested in travelling or furthering the education of people around the world, especially those in desparate need.

I will leave you with some wonderful quotes about teaching:

"Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave." - Henry Peter Brougham

"The teacher is the one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before." - Elbert Hubbard

"He who opens a school door, closes a prison." - Victor Hugo

"The most important function of education of any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure." - Grayson Kirk


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