Asking at the beginning of this semester, I would have answered this as a hard no. Not a soft “well maybe I could get interested” no or a middle-of-the-road “maybe not at this point in my life” no… it would have been a bent over at the waist with laughter, shaking my head and asking you if you were kidding kind of no. I thought to myself that this internship would be to answer the question if I could teach or not. What I didn’t know was that it would teach me that I could be a teacher.
Being a teacher and teaching are often two things that seem like they should go together but often don’t. While a teacher teaches, teaching could be done without a teacher. Effective teaching has to be done by someone who cares, but it could be done by someone who doesn’t. The difference between a teacher and a person who teaches is that earnest intent of someone who wants their students to learn and grow in the classroom and the person who’s just there to collect a paycheck. This is something I learned by listening to people talk about teachers who honestly didn’t care and looking back at my own experiences with teachers and professors. The people who taught me did their job well, I’m a graduate student and about to attain my Masters. Without them, I wouldn’t be here. But, there were some people who taught me that did not make me want to learn and did not make everything they taught interesting and engaging. The teachers I remember the most were my dynamic teachers. They engaged with me and encouraged me to interact with the material. They went the extra mile to be interactive and make sure that, while learning, the class was engaged with the information. In other words, they did more than just teach. They were real teachers.