Share Your Story

When I was in high school, I wanted to be rich (definitely went the opposite way with teaching), and went into college majoring in business. I remember going to a friend's party and his uncle was there talking about all the problems with the economy. He was a retired stockbroker and emphasized how screwed our generation was after the housing collapse. This was not something new. During this time in my life, I felt most people were always complaining and talking about the problems and issues in America, but no one was working towards solutions.

I believed the root to most of these problems could be addressed through education. I switched my major and thought history offered opportunities for dialogue and finding solutions. I have been teaching for 12 years now and love it. 

I'm not a social studies teacher but I will share my story anyway! I had started college with the idea of going to med school but I became derailed by the variety of science courses available to me beyond Biology. I started wandering down a path that had more of an Environmental Science focus and really was enjoying it. At some point I considered trying to get my teaching certification while an undergrad but I was way too late to start that program. I graduated and started working in the environmental field in a job that just didn't call to me but was a placeholder. I worked for the City of New York's drinking water supply collecting and testing water samples from the reservoirs. 

One day my supervisor told me that the local elementary school was interested in having someone explain the NY City drinking water supply to a 6th grade class. She asked if I was interested in doing the presentation. I volunteered not thinking too much about it. FYI - NYC's water comes from nearly 100 miles away from the city so I was in a small rural town where it's tough to imagine the connection to NYC. I brought a big map of the water supply system and headed over. 

When I got to the classroom and started talking about the water supply system, I found that I was having a great time. The children asked great questions and I was comfortable interacting with them and realized that it was time to get that teaching certificate. 

I spent the next 3 years working full time and getting a Master's degree along with my teaching cert at night. When student teaching came around, I had to take a leave of absence and live off my meager savings. Luckily I was able to go back to work for a few more weeks before I started my first teaching job in September 2005. My time in the water testing job also earned me 7 years in the retirement system!

I was 17 or 18, realized I couldn't afford film school out of state, reckoned I did okay in history class, but didn't know what to do with a history degree; then my dad said "you ever think about teaching?". The answer was that, no, I hadn't, and wasn't particularly interested in it, but I was going to college and had to pick a major so it would do. I've now spent nearly two decades trying to love the field and mostly failing.

I knew teaching was my thing by the end of my freshman year of college - but I was torn between teaching history or teaching English. I decided I didn’t want to grade essays or teach students how to read and write, so I went with a double major in history and education. Now here I am a lot of years later teaching students reading and writing strategies and grading their Social Studies essays…after recently getting certified as a Reading Specialist. It’s not what I had envisioned and it can be trying at times, but I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. 

What a great story! I’m sure your students love the real world application you can teach them about too.

My mother was a teacher, her mother was a teacher, and my other grandmother would have been a teacher. I was *not* going to be a teacher. I was going to become a Supreme Court justice (ambitious, I know). I graduated college and was doing my two-years-of-work-before-law school gig and found myself working in the second floor (i.e., underground, no windows) of an environmental consulting firm where days would pass without the phone ringing. 

I also talked to lots of unhappy lawyers. I thought about what might allow me to continue to support my varied interests and love of learning. I spent a couple of years leading tours around Washington DC to make sure I liked kids (I do), and here I am, 28 years later, still trying to figure it out. 

I think I thought I wanted to work in the NGO/Humanitarian world... 

One day I'm sitting there in a course called Global Flows in graduate school and I'm watching my professor and I'm thinking to myself... this guy makes his living thinking about big ideas every single day...

... so I switched to wanting to be a Professor... but to be totally honest ... at this point I was a little bit older, it would have been a "career change." I craved stability and needed a way to make a living right away. 

Teaching high school was a nice balance. I could make a living pursuing the life of the mind, I could support young people and really work in a human space, and I could have the stability and lifestyle that I was craving as well. 

It's a real grind but teaching has been a wonderful decision for me. I am grateful every day - even when it's a grind.