Stories, interviews, and videos where teachers discuss what keeps them in teaching.
In the back of my head, I think I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a teacher. It was mostly about finding the right subject matter that got me super excited about teaching. I remember…
I grew up in Brooklyn and attended PS 169. I always wanted to be an astronaut. I was fascinated with outer space. I idealized it. Then, when the first teacher went up in 1985, there was that horrible accident where the…
My younger sister and I are 15 years apart. When I was in college studying creative writing, she was just starting kindergarten and struggling with her sight words. She has ADHD, and my parents couldn’t afford a tutor. So when…
I became a teacher by luck. I was a chemical engineering major at Seton Hall University in New Jersey, where I grew up. There was a Special Olympics event, and I was setting up for it because I worked with…
From a young age, I loved to read. My mom could be standing right in front of me calling my name and I literally would not hear her because I would be so engrossed in whatever I was reading. I…
Hurricane Katrina, COVID, and the Ten Commandments in New Orleans. My mom has been teaching for fifty years. I grew up with her, literally grading papers and cooking at the same time. Back then, I never wanted to be a…
I studied history at the University of Michigan, and I played music for fun. I thought, ‘Okay, I'll graduate, and then I'll go start a band.’ That's what I did. We were called ‘Or, The Whale.’ I ended up moving…
When I was going into high school, I wanted to be a lawyer. That was my goal. I got into boarding school and during my freshman year, I played football. At the end of my freshman year, they cut the…
I always thought I wanted to go into law. I saw all these courtroom drama TV shows growing up, and that's what I wanted to do. I went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison with the intention of eventually going into…
I never thought of becoming a teacher. Early on, I wanted to be a pediatrician, but I was more interested in studying mental health and behavior vs. other sciences, so I thought, ‘Psychology would work.’ I thought it was a…