Why Education?

I've been asked that a lot ever since I officially declared that I would be pursuing an education minor. Sometimes, I say that it's because I can't see myself doing research for the rest of my life. Other times I ask myself the same exact question and don't know how to answer. But I think it's about time that I blogged about it so that I have something to look back on in case I ever do question my choice in my future career path.

I chose education because I love talking.
I'm a pretty extroverted person. There are times when I do need time to myself, but I can't be alone by myself for the rest of my life. I can't work in a lab and be antisocial and NOT talk to people. I need social interaction to live, to thrive, and to pursue. What better job to never stop talking than to be a teacher?
Through my social interaction, I want to be able to influence my students to do what they love. I know that some students will absolutely HATE chemistry while others may fall in love with it. But hopefully through all the struggles that we will go through to try and reach the endpoint, I'll be able to influence my students' future career plans and goals. I want to mentor students and get them to strive for higher goals and higher expectations. I want to see my students succeed right before my eyes and know that without our hard work, this would have never happened.

I chose education because I love teaching.
I live for that lightbulb moment. When a tutoree comes in not knowing or understanding anything, and suddenly comes to realization of how a certain formula or idea works... yeah. that. I want to make sure that every student understands what I teach and what indicates a definite success in teaching is when they begin to apply what they learn in the classroom outside of the classroom. When gas laws no longer pertain to just PV=nRT but also to soda bottles and balloons. When you begin to see the molecules that interact with one another in nature. When you begin to have a fuller understanding of the subject off the paper, and into real life, that's when you know you're successful.

but most of all, I chose education because I don't want to stop learning
Ironic, isn't it? As an educator, the students should always be first priority. If they don't understand something, you change yourself. You change your teaching style to match theirs, you look at their socioeconomic background and work around it, you lower your standards to meet them at a point and help lift them up from there, you go learn about their family and what can possibly affect their learning. It's not just about what happens in the classroom, nor is it always the students' fault for not understanding something, or even acting up. You change yourself so that the student learns at his/her full potential, and when the student learns, he/she learn how to better themselves and better their communities.

I want to close by inserting a quote from my EDU111 term paper, because I honestly couldn't have worded it any better.

Teaching had always been the last career choice on my list. I wanted go to medical school after I graduate and become a doctor. If that did not work out, I would do research in a lab and find some new drug that can cure some kind of disease. Finally if all of that fell through, I would teach high school chemistry and educate the minds of our future leaders. I chose to take education as an elective because I knew it would be somewhat practical in my future summer jobs as a tutor, and took the course thinking that I would learn how to teach young minds. However, throughout the course, I learned that there is so much more to teaching than just a simple outline or teaching plan. It was being sensitive to what these students’ lives are outside of the school. It’s funny though. I did mention that throughout my service learning, I constantly thought of what my teachers did wrong in terms of teaching, but I have never thought of how much I complained as a student saying, “they think we don’t have lives outside of this classroom”. Yet, I never took this idea into account on the opposite side as a teacher. Education in the Community revealed this idea to me. The course itself did not hold up to my expectations, because my expectations were completely incorrect and did not match up to what the course is truly about. The course is about integrating worldly views, cultural views, community views, family views, and students’ views into education and using these to become a successful teacher off of those ideas. It is about being a teacher, willing to be educated about the students so that we can better their experience and put them first. It is about learning creative ways to take what they are learning from textbooks and showing them what they can do to better the world and better their community. We, as teachers, need to put our best foot forward as educators so that we can motivate future minds that can hopefully change the world. I can now proudly say that teaching is the first and only career choice on my list now.

I'm handing in my official petition as an Education minor next week and I don't care what anybody says about my career choice. I don't care if I have the potential to be a doctor, or the potential to make hundreds of thousands of dollars as an annual salary. Because to me, teaching is not just a job. It is my passion, my mission, and my identity.