Why Teachers Teach

Considering a teacher's lot and a teacher's pay, why should anybody want to be a teacher? Well, there are reasons. In the National Education Association's monthly Journal, Wisconsin Teacher Dorothy McCuskey recalled a couple of her own: "The day you help Johnny discover that multiplication is really a short form of adding, the day a whole class cooperates to write a poem which expresses the fresh new beauty of a child's world, you know why teaching holds people. . . . All farmers and even tenders of city ivy pots know the fascination of watching things grow. But for the teacher it is not things--it's people."

Added California Schoolmarm Kathryn H. Martin, in the educational magazine Clearing House: "People who are too smart rarely make good teachers [because they] can't understand why other people make so many mistakes. . . . If I didn't remember how I felt about long division, I'd go berserk some day when I see 'there' and 'their' mixed up for the one-millionth time. . . . The most interesting thing about teaching is not what-you already know, but how much you learn and need to learn. A teacher who 'knew it all' would be nothing but a sad automaton, but I've never met one. Most of us don't know very much, but we keep on trying because the children insist. . . ."

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