Why you should REALLY become a teacher

Guest blogger Lily Nienstedt is in her third year teaching 7th grade science at T.T. Knight Middle School where she also leads a team of three Teach Kentucky teachers. She grew up in Germany and attended high school in Abu Dhabi before majoring in Chemistry at Williams College and moving to the great foreign land of Kentucky.

I asked my students what I should write about for this post, and they told me to “write about why we’re the best.” Mind you, an exhaustive list of all my students and their individual achievements would be thrilling (one of them has recently learned how to fart on command), but I thought instead I could just use this space to list the top five reasons why I think anyone should drop everything and become a middle school teacher.

You will never, ever be bored

If you’re indecisive like me and choosing a pizza topping feels like way too much commitment, then this is the perfect job for you. You don’t have to just commit to being a teacher. You will be a zoologist, a nurse, a social media consultant, a relationship counselor, a judge and a copy machine repairman – to name a few. Somewhere in between, you will also teach food webs, narrative structures or fractions. If nothing else, you will have great stories to tell. Which leads me to my second point…

You will be very popular at parties

I bet nobody gets instant street cred when they tell someone “I am an accountant.” But tell someone you teach 7th grade and you automatically become a hero in the eyes of everyone at your Aunt’s dinner party. You might as well be James Bond on a secret mission to save the Commonwealth by preventing a kid from super gluing their hand to a SmartBoard.

Your pop culture knowledge will be lit

You knew about the “Mannequin Challenge” before Hillary Clinton’s campaign team did it? You probably teach Middle School. The number 21 gives you nightmares? You probably teach Middle School. Trust me, this knowledge will come in handy. At the very least you will never embarrass yourself by using the extremely passe phrase “on fleek”.

You will always reach your Fitbit goal

Between trying every copy machine in the building, walking your students to every class, helping serve breakfast, and moving around the classroom, 10,000 steps a day are virtually guaranteed. No need to keep splurging on that gym membership!

You will make a difference

We’ve all heard it before – great teachers can affect earning potential, inspire lifelong learning, and will be indirectly responsible for the development of flying cars and talking whales… But great teachers really do make a difference. You will create a classroom that is structured and safe for students whose lives might otherwise never feel structured or safe. You will be an advocate for a child who may not have ever had anyone advocate for them. The truth is that on many days, it will seem like the only thing that was taught in your classroom was patience and humility (and to clarify, in such cases, you are the student). You will ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” and you will fight to find an answer that justifies the heartache and hard work that comes with teaching.

But at the end of the year, as you hug crying children and send them off into summer break, you will find your answer – but not in a grandiose statement of how the world is a different place because you chose teaching as your profession. No, the privilege of teaching is in choosing to put students first every single day. That is how teachers care for their students, and that is how you will make a difference.