Why I decided to become a teacher

I have wanted to be a teacher for as long as I can remember. I can remember being a very young child, even before I started school, and wanting to be a teacher someday. I think that it started when I was 3. I remember taking my big sister, Lori to school and seeing her kindergarten teacher. She seemed so great to me. She was really nice and she always paid attention to me. I could not wait to be old enough to go to kindergarten. I still have very distinct memories of her yellow piano, and seeing my sister sitting on the rug listening to the Mrs. DiScico play that piano and sing.
Pretty soon, Mrs. DiScico was my kindergarten teacher. She was everything that a good kindergarten teacher should be. I use to pretend that I was a kindergarten teacher at home, and I would re-enact some of the lessons from the day.
As I went through school I watched my teachers. I loved the way they wrote on the board and held their worn-out, well-loved books. They were nice, patient and interesting.
As I got older, I had a few duds for teachers, but by then, I already knew for sure what I wanted to be "when I grew up."
I use to play school with my sister Lori, but she always wanted to be the teacher and me to be the student. That wasn't my idea of fun, so we would set up separate classrooms, complete with chalkboards and stuffed animal students. We would converse in the halls about students or visit each others "classrooms" to tell each other to "keep it down!" We didn't have interdisciplinary teams, but too bad because that would have been fun!
I can never remember a time when I had any doubt about becoming a teacher. As I got older, my vision became more solidified. I wanted to be a Mom and a teacher. I didn't know what age I wanted to teach, but I always leaned towards middle school age. I started thinking about what qualities I liked in my teachers, and which ones got on my nerves. I always pictured myself as one of the awesome teachers, of course.
Except for two months during 7th grade, when I told everyone that I wanted to be an accountant when I grew up (I don't even think I knew what an accountant did), I never wavered.
During high school, I meet up with plenty of teachers that could have made me believe that teachers, in general, are just put on this earth to make life joyless, but I also had a few really good teachers. Those good teachers gave me valuable examples of how to be a successful teacher. The bad ones, I pretty much just ignored.
I actually had one incident that truly epitomizes the effect of a good teacher on a students success. In 11th grade, we had to take American Government. I had this teacher, who was clearly burnt out, and he was so terribly boring that I really don't think I heard one single word he said all semester. He was monotone and had no sense of humor. His assignments were so rote and meaningless that I just couldn't bare it. I would sit in the back and just try to survive the 40 minutes without falling asleep or exploding. Around test time, I would try to pull it together, but I was always so lost, that I could never manage. Needless to say, I completely failed the class and had to take it over. And its a good thing that I did because the next time I took it I had one of the most awesome teachers of my high school career. Mr. Buffalino, who was also a part time college professor in the evenings, was the kind of teacher that made even the most boring things, like branches of the government, interesting and relevant. I looked forward to his class everyday. I didn't even have to think about passing, it came very naturally. I was engaged and learning. He would mostly lecture, with some activities to back up learning, but he was so interesting to listen to. He would joke around with us as he taught, he got to know us personally, and he treated us like adults. He took our little problems very seriously, while at the same time assuring us that someday, all those little things would seen trivial. He made me excited for the future. He made us see that we could do big things. He never gave us meaningless homework or busywork. He just expected us to learn the material in our own ways, and do good on the tests. I got an A+. Most people did really well in his class. Not that it was easy. There was a lot to learn, but he made it all interesting and relevant. He Incorporated history and current events into his teaching to help us to really understand how our government functioned, and he worked in that all important critical viewpoint that was so rare at the high school level. Finally, someone who was willing to include a perspective that didn't always assume that our country was perfect. Thinking back on it, he was a lot more like a college professor than a typical high school teacher. One very important thing that I learned from him, was that it is okay, even GOOD, to think for yourself. That was a revolutionary perspective for me at the time, especially after Mr. Monotone, who just wanted you to spit useless information back at him without questioning. Finally a teacher who thought it was great if you pushed the envelope a bit. Mr. Buffalino taught me more than American Government, he gave me confidence in my ability to succeed academically. Truthfully, I wasn't that excited about college, though I knew I had to go if I wanted to become a teacher, I just figured it would be more of the same. Mr. Buffalono gave me a much needed taste of the kind of critical thinking that is the key to learning in college (and life.)
Well, anyway, It is taking me a long time to finish college, but that's because my goal of becoming a mother (I have 4 small children) came first in the progression. I have been coming along slow but steady for a long time. By the time the baby starts kindergarten (she's almost three now) I will be graduating and seeking my first teaching job. Its been a long time coming, but I look forward to it. I've been working towards this since I was three myself.