I was still teaching when I reposted an old blog: WHY YOU DON’T WANT TO BE A TEACHER. That post arrived on my old Blogger site in 2011, then here in 2019.

Thousands of people read the original posting about why you don’t want my former job. At least two college programs assigned that post to students training to be teachers.

I’m grateful for the years I spent in education. I loved teaching but I enjoy other things, and I understand why teachers last, typically, just four years in the profession. There are people who think I’m a fool to have done it at all.

A dear friend, and a friend’s husband, and my own father trained as teachers in college, earned their certification, and then did something else. And throughout the decades I taught, teachers quit after a year or two. There were easier jobs that paid better and commanded more respect. Yes, the ten-week summer off with your kids, and teaching was not my original plan, but… forty years.

Many of my former students have gone on to teach or considered becoming teachers. And I love them for that, but it’s a hard choice, because teachers are not in the same position they were when I was young, or even when I entered the profession. The job was difficult in 2011 when I first wrote about the challenges that drive teachers out of my profession, it’s harder now, harder than ever before.

I was not a good teacher when I started teaching, but I got better. The substitute teaching helped a lot, switching to teaching English and becoming a parent certainly helped. By then I loved my job. I said that all the time and it was true. I liked to think I was a creative teacher who made mistakes sometimes but mostly did a good job and had a measure of autonomy in my classroom. I could be demanding of my students and innovative and my administration actually appreciated me for doing it (at least most of the time).

One thing that was very important: I did every assignment I gave my students. Another teacher told me that doing every assignment with my students was stupid, but I believe it kept me honest. A few years later, during an in-service, that same teacher, by then in admin, urged teachers to do that very thing. They never had but decided it was helpful—ha! Doing their assignments meant I recognized what might be hard, what I might expect, and forced me to only teach what I valued enough to do myself. My students knew I worked hard and I knew that what I asked them to do was important.

I went gray in my profession. I loved my job and thankfully I’m proud of the work I did.

So now I do other things. I gave presentations about teaching writing for a time. Most mornings I review the accuracy of things I find online. I read more than a book each week, and the news every day from many reliable sources around the world. My weaving and quilting allow me to work with color. I blog and write fiction. Gary and I walk a few miles most mornings together. Gary and I talk about things, and we are always looking for a light-hearted show to watch at the end of the day.

This is Thanksgiving week, which most kids seem to have off from school. Wednesday we hosted people in our condominium building for hot cider and nibbles. [Leftover nibbles will be fed to the birds when we get back to the beach today.] On Thanksgiving Day we went out together for the Turkey Trot in Portland that ends in the Washington Park Zoo and I ran over a mile of it. We shared a meal with each of our sons and their families. Gary vacuumed the condo three times—before, between, and after—and twice I made a version of my grandmother’s Waldorf salad with apples, veg, and a vegan dressing. No nuts because a member of one side of the family is allergic (she didn’t try it) and one on the other hates nuts (he didn’t try it either). A friend of a friend asked me for the recipe. Now that I’ve nailed it, I’ll write it into my cookbook.

Life around us keeps changing and so do we. We learn new things, we try and fail and sometimes we surprise ourselves. I am about to complete a quilt pieced from hand-painted, tie-dyed, and batik cotton. I have Asian silks waiting for me to take that plunge. I fear there will be no coming back, once I start, the stash of fabrics is waiting.

This will be a materially lean holiday coming up. Tomorrow I will begin painting our vacant rental. We need it rented by January if we’re to pay our taxes next year. I have a lot of repairs to complete and there is no time to make winter cards to send out. No ornaments to share. In the last decade, the typical family spent $850 each winter plus another $250 on holiday gifting and meals and decor. We will be a frugal household to balance out a bigger spender. It’s happened in the past. There was the year the dog ate a sock and her surgery took every dime. And the year it happened again. Our children were young then.

Thanks to my students, I know a lot I wouldn’t know otherwise. Teenagers slept in sheds and on couches, took care of their parents. Paid for their own medical care. They didn’t always have “pretty lives.” Even so, they were more grateful that they knew.

I used to give my students an assignment to write a letter of thanks. We did that during the week before Winter Break, but since this is Thanksgiving, still, as I write, I’ll share it now.

Gary and were living in the University District, our Senior year, I think. I was paid $1.90 an hour in the Record Shop of the University Book Store and Gary had worked there longer, and was in Marking. I was stony-broke from tuition and supplies and tools I needed for class. I wanted to gift my parents, could not afford gifts, and was doodling in my sketchbook. I drew a tree, root to twig and began a list of the things my father had done for me. Taught me to fly fish, make model airplanes, explained about ships and why the notion that Columbus was the first European explorer to arrive in America was flat wrong. He taught me how to use a library, research, and logic. He taught me codes and ciphers and patience… well, you see how the list went on. Little things, specific skills like playing chess, unintentional things drawing diagrams to explain ideas. I worked all morning on that list, rearranged it, drew another tree and wrote my thank-you under the roots. I apologized for not giving him more. He said, “Daughter-of-mine, how could you think there is anything I would treasure more than this.”

One time a father came into my classroom the first day back at school in January. His expression was stern. He seemed to be chewing me out, but what he said was his daughter had made him cry. Go make someone cry.

So maybe consider who you might thank, as I did myself each year while writing with my high school students. Who helped you along, taught you something by example, or step-by-step over days or weeks, the person who didn’t need to be kind that day, but who was kind. The person you want to thank.

And Gary brings me coffee every morning. Thank you, sweetheart.

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