by Brian

This is inspired by Taylor Mali's poem What Teachers Make. 

For a long time I don't think I had a good explanation for why I teach.  I started teaching when I was already in my thirties.  I had done a lot of things, and I was working as a carpenter building a house in November in the Pacific Northwest when I decided I wanted to go back to school to get my teaching certificate.  If you've ever lifted a bundle of wet cedar shakes out of the mud and carried them up a ladder, only to repeat that action a hundred times, you'll understand why.

I remember meeting someone early in my career who asked what I did for a living.  I said "I'm a teacher now."  She said what do you mean now, and I explained that I had been many things and now I was a teacher.  It was what I did, not what I was.  I remember the odd look she gave me.

But as the years went by, and the first class that I had as freshmen graduated and went off to work or college I started to feel a change.  Every so often one of them would write me a note, or send me a card, thanking me for helping them in some small way.  Sometimes they came out of the blue, years later, describing some small but meaningful thing I had done; often a thing I had no memory of.

I've been here 27 years now, and I have kept all those notes.  When I get a little low I pull them out and read them again.  Some of them were written by students who are now the parents of my students.  When I see them at Back to School night, they tell me how glad they are that I am teaching their son or daughter.  Often neither one of us can remember exactly which subject I taught them, but there's a warmth.  We like each other.  I helped them grow up.

So now the answer to what I do is unequivocal:  I am a teacher.  I make a difference!