Why I Became an Educator

I'm about 95% sure I wanted to be a math teacher all my life. I still have this questionnaire that I filled out in 5th grade where I wrote that I wanted to become a math teacher. However, I'm saying 95% instead of 100% because, well, I don't remember actually writing that down. Also, I'm pretty sure in high school and at the beginning of college I didn't want to be a teacher at all.

It took me a long time to realize that I actually wanted to be a teacher. In high school, I really respected my teachers - especially the passionate ones. I had this history teacher who was just so excited to teach his content everyday. He made even the most boring topics seem interesting and fun. However, there was no way I was going to become a teacher! I was going to aim higher (whatever that means).

In college, I decided to study Economics. As a freshman, I needed to take a seminar so I decided on one about Urban Education. The class was amazing. The professor was amazing, the topics interested me so much, and I actually felt passionate about something: education inequity. However, I was an Economics major and that meant that I was going to do finance or banking, because that's what all Econ majors did (this is sarcasm by the way).

Anyways, I did the whole finance thing. I actually really enjoyed it. I really like Excel, and I really excelled at it (get it?). The only thing was, as much as I enjoyed it, I wasn't passionate about it. There's a difference between liking something and being passionate about it. That was the turning point for me, I realized, okay I need to follow what I'm actually passionate about, which was education.

I did a full 180. I started doing more education related internships. I interned at Let's Get Ready and was a Teaching Fellow at Breakthrough. Teaching was hard but as hard as it was, I loved it. In college, I decided to focus on education as much as I could; and thank god, education and economics intersected a lot (which in the real world is not a great thing, but for me was great). I focused on graduation rates in my Econometrics class. I did my senior thesis on school choice and game theory.

So by this point, I was set on teaching. However, I didn't have a teaching degree. I had done my fellowship and other internships, but what do I do if I didn't actually major in education? That's where Teach For America came in. I actually applied and accepted my junior year, that's how sure I was about teaching.

So here we are. I'm about to start my third year of teaching. Here's the thing about teaching, it's amazing and it's frustrating. I love the relationships that I have with my students. I love teaching Math. I've seen so many students start to actually like math and every time it happens I low-key want to cry (but, like, I'm not about to do that in front of my students). However, the inequities are blatant. The lack of training and resources. The politics. The rigid structure we must follow as teachers. It can be a lot. But I still love it. I love being an educator. Now that I've finally become an educator, my next goal is to fight education inequity. Hopefully in a few years I can write a blog post about how I did that.