Why I Teach

I think my entry into teaching was a foregone conclusion.  Really, I have tried just about everything else...everything from construction to acting to working for non-profits.  I have been a laborer and an office lackey.  Hell, I've even been in office management.  I am not a traditional academic in terms of my educational trajectory, but if you look into my family history, there is my Dad who was a professor of Biology, Botany and Zoology on any given semester at the Sacramento Community College in Sacramento, California.  I grew up playing teacher and even had the ubiquitous red pencil within early reach so that there was a flair of realism to the "corrections" I liberally handed out to neighborhood kids playing my students.  My mother always declared, "Barbara will teach."  Oh how I hated her easy proclamation of my future career.  It was if I had no choice in the matter, as if I was somehow fated to stand in front of the classroom and teach because I was unable do do anything else.  I had often heard my professor father say, "Those who cannot do, teach" in mild remonstration of his failure (or so I perceived) of not making it in med school and becoming a doctor.  I suspected she sensed in me the same kind of person, a person without the tools for a career but the tools to facilitate other careers.  I did not want to be somebody else's stepping stone.

So I flailed about for a good decade before I could no longer resist the siren song of the classroom.  It happened during my Master's program at Sac State.  In order to avoid paying tuition, there was a graduate assistant program which allowed Master's students to teach the lab sections of the Public Speaking class offered there.  I signed up, made the cut and was off to the races.  I think what had me from the very beginning is that teaching afforded me the ability to be on stage again while also being able to engage with others, focus on others really.  One of many reasons (aside from the deplorable and constant attending poverty) as to why I had quit the acting business is that I was tired of thinking about myself.  Teaching allowed me to focus on others.  And, like I said, it was like being on stage again and, I'm not going to lie, I love that.  For better or for worse, I am a performer.  And teaching was acting, directing and, to some degree, writing my own script.  The absolute best part however was realizing how much I was learning while I was teaching!  When you teach you are forced to "own" the material you present.  There is something about getting up there and having an audience keep you honest about what you know.  Teaching is "doing", in this sense, because the in classroom honesty and engagement provides fodder for work outside of the classroom.  Creative and academic work.  This blog is a result of teaching because what happens in the classroom and with students inspires me to add to the blog.

I love teaching.  I love my students.  I even love grading, in some kind of sick way.  I love the hours.  I love the dress code because there isn't really one.  I love the intellectual freedom.  I am even learning to love writing.  Teaching allows me to give vent to my passions, requires it really so that I can more effectively engage my students.  Teaching is a lot of work and I won't become rich doing it, but it gives me the quality of life factor and the students keep me engaged.  Guess I'm glad Mom wasn't wrong.

Frank Bush teaching circa 1986: