When I Grow Up...

When I grow up, I want to be a teacher. I want to be employed by the country’s largest and most inefficient bureaucracy. I want to be complained to daily by hormonal adolescents and scathingly reviewed by community members for the mediocrity or even failing education system of which I will be a part.

The problem won’t be solved by schools. It will be solved by homes. “But we have no control over that!” “So get the government to fix it!” you say.  I say: you wrong.

I am not setting out to turn teenagers into Shakespeare quoting, poetry writing, AP test vanquishing nerds, although I wouldn’t mind any one of those by-products. I–and don’t let this get out to my future employers–am setting out to make good moms and dads. I am setting out to influence the most influential group on earth: American teenagers. I am hoping that those whiny kids will be so inspired by our class discussions and the uplifting and mind-opening literature, along with my unconditional love and patience, that they will come back their senior year and say thank you, and for the rest of their lives say thank you. Imagine the difference that could make in their future home?! No really. PAUSE. Think of that -- Little things like that. a tidge of gratitude. If they don’t remember a single book we read and can’t spit back a single quote we memorized from Halupa’s cache, I couldn’t care less.

Some day, the kids of my students, raised by happy, proactive, grateful citizens, will be in school, and some teacher should come thank me! Actually, I hope she’ll thank the kid for being so darn good and make him feel like a million bucks. That would be good enough for me.