Why do people choose teaching?

Why do people choose teaching?

By Otong Setiawan Djuharie

BANDUNG (JP): There are many reasons that lead people to
choose the teaching profession. Some people choose teaching
because they enjoy being with young people and watching them
grow. Others need to be around young people to let their students
grow on behalf of themselves.

For some individuals, teaching is a family tradition, a craft
that one naturally masters and a world that surrounds one from
childhood. For others, teaching is magical because they have had
magical teachers choose careers they now want to assume. Teaching
can be a way of sharing power, of convincing people to value what
one values, or to explore the world with oneself or through
oneself.

There are some cynical reasons for entering the teaching
profession, which were much more prevalent when getting a job was
not difficult. For example, for some people teaching become a
matter of temporary convenience, of taking a job which seemed
respectable and not too demanding while going to law school,
supporting a spouse through professional or graduate school,
scouting around for a good business connection, or merely marking
time while figuring out what one really wanted to do as an adult.
For others, teaching is a jump-off point into administration,
research, or supervision.

A recent trend has led many student teachers to become
teachers to negate wounds they received when they were in school.
They want to encounter the racism, the sexual put-downs, all the
other humiliations they experienced with the new, freer ways of
teaching and learning. They want to be teachers to protect and
nurture people younger than themselves, young people who have
every likelihood of being damaged during their school years.

Some of these people come from poor and oppressed communities,
and their commitment to the children is a commitment to the
community of their parents, brothers, sisters, and their own
children as well. Other aspiring teachers -- mostly from middle
or upper-class backgrounds -- have given up communicating with
their parents and rejected the community they grew up in.
Teaching for them becomes a means of searching for ways to
connect with a community they care for and serve.

Everyone who goes into teaching, even temporarily, has many
reasons for choosing to spend five hours a day with young people.
These reasons are often unarticulated and more complex than one
imagines. Yet they have significant effects on everyday work with
students and on the satisfaction and strength the teacher gets
from that work. Consequently, it makes sense if one is thinking
of becoming a teacher, to begin questioning oneself and
understanding what one expects from teaching and what one is
willing to give to the profession.

There are a number of questions people thinking of becoming
teachers might ask themselves in order to clarify their motives
and focus on the type of teaching situations that could make
sense for them. These questions do not have simple answers.
Sometimes they cannot be answered until one has taught for a
while. But I think it makes sense to keep them in mind while
considering whether one actually wants to teach, and then, if one
does, again during one's training and the first few years in the
profession.

* What reasons does one give oneself for wanting to teach? Are
they all negative (e.g., because school was awful, or because one
was damaged, or because one needs a job and working as a teacher
is more respectable then working as a cab driver or salesperson)?
What are the positive reasons for wanting to teach? Is there any
pleasure to be gained from teaching? Knowledge? Power?

* Why does one want to spend so much time with young people?
Is she/he afraid of adults? Intimidated by adult company? Fed up
with the competition and coldness of business?

* What does one want from students? Does she/he want them to
do well in tests? Learn particular subject matter? Like each
other? Like him/her? How much does she/he need to have students
like him/her? Is she/he afraid to criticize them, or set limits
on their behavior because they might be angry with her/him?

* What does one know that she/he can teach or share with
his/her students? Too many young people coming out of college
believe that they do not know anything worth sharing, or at least
feel they haven't learned anything valuable during their
training. Teacher training usually doesn't help since it
concentrates on "teaching skills" rather than the content of what
might be learned.

* Getting more specific, a prospective teacher ought to
consider what age group she/he feels greatest affinity toward or
most comfortable with.

It takes years to learn how to teach well, and even then one
never learns once and for all. Teaching is not like driving a car
or adding a column of figures. Each group of students one works
with has different needs and present new challenges. Like any
craft, one learns teaching by practicing it and by finding
models, other teachers whose practices one admires and can study.

The writer is a lecturer at Sunan Gunung Djati State Institute
for Islamic Studies in Bandung.