Why teach? A Reflection Prompt by Sonia Nieto

Written in 2014

Why Teach? I answered this question when I took L500. I’ve looked for my old answer but, alas, cannot find it amidst the debris of my studies. But I find myself this year asking this question over and over as life events shake up the routine of my career.

Not that I have ever been able to have a routine ‘routine’ in my 19 years of teaching EFL and other miscellaneous subjects. I have continuously reached out for formal study through more degrees and certificates - like a CELTA, computer technology, and instructional design. I have also continuously immersed myself in professional development through teaching organizations, lively dialogues with colleagues of varied disciplines, and giving workshops and presentations to peers. I don’t teach to protect a routine. I teach because it’s my vocation that I found when I arrive in Seoul in 1996. Teaching continues to call me.

After 19 years of teaching I wonder if I should still be teaching. These days I wonder why I should continue to teach when my 19 year old niece made more per month on her summer internship than I make monthly at 47 years of age, 3 bachelors degrees, 2 masters and now a doctoral candidate for an EdD. 

I wonder why I teach when my colleague today told me that my university has increased the required number of teaching hours for a full time instructor but will not increase my salary, nor will they provide me with other benefits that other foreign teachers are eligible for simply because I teach a content course and not an English course per se. 

(These changes are both political and demographic in my context in South Korea. Political because the current federal administration is reducing its underwriting of English education at all levels. It is demographic too because of the decrease in enrollment to university because of shrinking birth rate of Koreans). (Nieto, p4-5, 2005).

Obviously, I’m not teaching for the money. So, why do I teach?

I have a secret. I’m a learning junkie. I can’t get enough. Ever since I played school after school as an elementary school student, I love the validation that I get from learning. Of starting off clueless, of wrestling with myself and the discomfort of realizing that I am just not all that I thought I was. I love the humility and challenge that learning brings me to be more compassionate in life and to conquer fear as life twists and turns. And I have found that the best learning space is to be a teacher. I teach in order to learn.

Teaching pushes me to apply theory. Teaching pushes me to move things that I read about into experiences that I test out. But of all the professional development, credentials and colleague support, my main motivation is learning from my students.

My students make me realize that learning is change. I can use the same textbook, activity, project or prompt, but I will get different results each time. Different enriching results that show me how my students see through different eyes. My students and I have access to so much data. Alone I can come up with answers, but with my students we can save the world! I believe and trust that constructing knowledge together allows us to test more hypotheses, provide more relevant examples, and help each other access learning in new and better ways. By developing materials and experiences for learning for my students who are not stereotypes of Korean learners (keen on learning, cooperative yet competitive, good at math, girls good at language) I not only practice culturally responsive teaching, but model it for my students who are facing a more multicultural Korea. 

While Nieto writes about public education, I think that all private and public education systems are imploding. Stagnation of salaries, the elimination of liberal art departments like philosophy from higher education institutions, the proliferation of adjunct professors and the elimination of tenure track positions all harken end days for public education. Will we all stop learning if there is no ‘school’? I still believe we need guides and experts. We need these guides and experts to help us see what we are failing to see; whether it is our next step, the most efficient path, a new variable to include in our theory or simply to remind us of our own potential that we don’t see or believe in. With all the change in education, teachers will still be sought to navigate the information overload of data.

Written in 2014 as I restarted my studies in LCLE.

While traditional systems are being turned on their head, technology has liberated access to learning as never before. But after several generations of schools being encouraged to produce students to be good blue or white collared workers, the catharsis that learning brings has been morphed predictable results of standardized testing. The unpredictability and freedom that comes from learning has been given up to a process of systematization that provides access economic stability and safety for some and loss to others. Learning should not be such a zero-sum game.

So, why do I teach? I teach in order to learn and be inspired to continue to grow into my best person. I teach to meet the new challenges that show up on my doorstep every day with a community of people that are also showing up wondering “why.”

References

Nieto, S. (Ed.). (2005). Why we teach. Teachers College Press.