I COULDN'T ASK FOR A BETTER GIG

TOP TEN BEST PARTS OF BEING ALIVE IN MY. . . . SHOES:
#10 WORK: WAL-MART TIRE & LUBE EXPRESS AND TEACHING, PART VI:

“He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.” (George Bernard Shaw, “Maxims for Revolutionists)

Some teachers take offense at this statement, but I happen to be a big fan of Shaw and I think that in a sense his statement is probably accurate. I once heard someone say that when choosing a profession, you ought to find something that you would enjoy doing even if you didn’t get paid for it. There are a multitude of things that I do for enjoyment, principally reading and writing. I also enjoy interesting discussions, thinking about things, learning, backpacking, spending time with my family, but nobody’s going to pay me for doing these things in the way that I enjoy doing them and I have very little interest in doing them in such a way that I might get paid for it. In the areas of reading and writing; while I love doing these things, I simply am not efficient or proficient enough to get paid for them. To put Shaw’s statement in perspective if I were a better writer, I would do that for a living. Since I’m not, I teach writing instead. There’s nothing degrading about that. I’m a better writing than most, but I’m not as good as Shaw or Heller or even Rowling. I, am however, skilled at teaching uninterested and unwilling adolescents how to organize their ideas into words on a page in a way that a reader can understand. That, I’m certain, is a reasonably impressive skill and it hasn’t been easy to attain and I’m still honing it.

I didn’t know it when I began (those first years were rather difficult and unpleasant), but it turns out that teaching adolescents to read, write, and think more proficiently is probably the perfect job for me. Perhaps the best feature of teaching is that one never arrives. There’s always room and urgent need for improvement. I will never be good enough. My students will never improve enough. There will always be more to do and more that I should have done and I find this fact extremely motivating and inspiring. That statement is not redundant. I am frequently inspired but rarely motivated. My students need me each minute of every class period and I can’t let them down. I am seldom motivated to this extent in other areas of my life. The urgency of the school year energizes me. We have so much to do and so little time. I love it. Even now, just writing about it, I’m getting a little excited.

When I think of all the people who are unhappy with their lives and their work, I think that I must be a very lucky man to have fallen into a profession that is both motivating and inspiring. I’ve had jobs where I dreaded going to work and couldn’t wait to leave. Teaching isn’t like that at all. There just isn’t time for those sorts of thoughts. On the way to work I’m thinking about what we’ll be doing. Throughout the day, I am focus on my student and their work. And on the way home, I’m reflecting on what we did and how it could have been better. I couldn’t ask for a better gig.