Teaching and learning are joyfully inseparable for me. When people find out that I teach high school math, many shudder and say, “better you than me!” Teaching mathematics, while hard work, is also enjoyable for me. In fact, I feel as grateful and blessed to be teaching today as I did when I started teaching over 20 years ago.
Both of my parents had been teachers so it was easy to imagine following in their footsteps. I realized that I wanted to teach mathematics when I was a freshman in high school. I had the opportunity to tutor three little girls who struggled in mathematics. They ranged in age from 4 to 9 so my challenge was to keep things fun and active for them. With a little research into their individual needs, I was able to borrow manipulative tools and create a few activities based on rhymes and songs. Even though this was my first teaching job, it felt familiar because there was so much learning involved for me. I discovered that the planning took nearly twice the amount of time that I would spend teaching with the girls. This realization has served me well too though: teaching takes time; but there is real satisfaction and insight to be found in the practice and planning that are keys to a good lesson.
Around the time I discovered how much I enjoyed teaching, Alice Reich, a professor of Anthropology at Regis University, published an essay about why she enjoyed teaching. In it, she says, “I teach because it is one of the quickest ways to finding out what I don’t know; it makes me alert to new possibilities. And I teach to create new possibilities.” This portion of her essay captures an important part of the magic of teaching for me: there is a mysterious gift in each student’s experience, waiting to be realized. Working with students at this time in their lives is like wrapping a present. Years later, when parents and students drop me a quick note to let me know what they are up to, I am struck with such delight as I unwrap my gift. My former students have taken such a variety of exciting paths ranging from working at NASA, to flying planes, to studying at sea aboard a sailboat, and creating cutting edge architectural designs. I am so very proud to have had an opportunity to teach but also to learn from their unique perspectives and help them be more tenacious problem-solvers as adults in fields that we might not have imagined when we were together.
I teach because I am addicted to learning. I love turning concepts over and inside out, trying to find a way that sparks understanding while satisfying the natural curiosity students bring to our classroom. I enjoy learning new things and being challenged every day to motivate, inspire, create, listen, defend, improvise, plan and entertain. This is why I teach.
