A fair amount of people ask me like I'm crazy, or they look at me like I'm stupid. As much as it upsets me, a lot of the time people will look at me or make me feel like I'm a failure because I chose to teach instead of doing pretty much anything else with my life.
So I figured I'd explain here, publicly, why I chose to become a teacher. A high school science teacher at that.
I assume some people think that I am a teacher because I failed to get a job as a scientist, or that I'm not good enough to be a scientist. This is not the case. The reason I became a teacher, first and foremost, is because it is the job that I want to do. I am doing this completely by choice - I am smart enough to get work where I please with the right training (and no this is not bragging, I just feel like a lot of people assume teachers aren't smart enough to get work elsewhere...) No, I didn't always want to do this. I wanted to be an artist, astronaut, archaeologist, biotechnologist, science communicator, then a teacher.
My first university degree was a Bachelor of Science, with a major in Plant Science, or Botany as it used to be called. During this degree I did a few extended lab projects and worked with the CSIRO as a lab assistant for a year. I absolutely loved learning, but it took me a long time working in labs to realise that I didn't really enjoy actually doing science work. I discovered that I did, however, really enjoy talking to people about science. I enjoyed explaining things and helping people to understand about the world in a way they hadn't before. I enjoyed seeing what I call the 'light-bulb moment' - that precise moment when a person finally and truly understands something that they didn't know before.
At the end of my science degree, I decided I wanted to be involved in science communication. At this stage I didn't think I'd enjoy classroom teaching, so I toyed with the ideas of science journalism/writing and informal science education (think science centres, outreach programs etc). After talking extensively with people in the industry, I realised I would need another degree to even be considered for such work. This eventuated in a Master of Communication in Science Communication. Throughout this degree I inadvertently targeted all the assessment items that I could (except for my other GM controversy blog) towards science education. I loved it. I loved it so much that by the time I got to the end of that degree I decided I wanted to actually just teach science. After working full time in a well paying, comfortable, easy office job that had nothing to do with science or education, this was a somewhat difficult but easy decision to make.
So, back to uni I went to complete a Graduate Diploma in Secondary Education. I did better in this degree than my past two. I don't know if it was maturity or interest that fuelled it, but I did well, really well. It was easy. I enjoyed doing the readings, assessments, practicals, all of it.
The first few times in a classroom were nerve-racking, but I felt completely at home at the same time. This was, is, my job. My thing. I love it. People tell me I am very good at it. I just honestly feel comfortable doing this job, comfortable in a way I haven't felt in any of the other dozen or so jobs I've had in the past.
It is not easy. It takes up far too much of my personal time. I cry, I laugh, I rage, I stumble, I excel, I enjoy (almost) every single moment of it.
That's why I teach.
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