Doing Better Things
Last night, the English department at my college treated the Masters students to dinner as a congratulations for finishing our thesis papers and the program. It was a really wonderful evening, and it really didn’t set it until last night that I’ve finished my Master’s. It feels good, but it’s also bittersweet. I will miss my classmates, and believe it or not, I will miss the work – the writing, the discussions, the reading… all of it.
It was nice, however, to share an evening with professors and classmates that was more social than scholarly. I was sitting next to Tim, of course, but also near my professors. They were extremely complimentary of my work, which was nice to hear. They were interested to hear about the conference at which I am presenting my thesis this July. They were also curious about what I will be doing now that I have my Master’s. I had expected this question; most teachers don’t get their Master’s in English unless they want to teach at a community college or go on to their Doctorate and teach at a university. What I didn’t expect was that one of my professors would try to persuade me to “do better things” – his words, not mine. He tried to persuade me so much, in fact, that the head of the department interrupted him and said, “Stop trying to persuade her to leave high school! We need teachers like her!” This topic wasn’t brought up again until the end of the night, as we were saying good bye. My professor shook my hand and said, “Please consider going on to do better things.”
The fact of the matter is that I could not think of a single, more important thing I could be doing with my life right now.
You see, there are assumptions out there about teachers, and sometimes, those who we think are the most liberal thinkers are the ones who hold on to these assumptions the strongest. We are mostly women who didn’t actually choose teaching. We were pushed into it by a patriarchal society. We were told our whole lives that we should choose a job where we work with people or nurture people, because that’s what women are supposed to do. And, of course, those of us who teach English or other humanities courses are doing so because we were not encouraged enough to pursue careers in math or science.
Some people truly believe that we couldn’t possibly be teaching high school English because we love it or because we feel at home in front of a classroom or because we have a passion for teaching. Or because we have a passion for English language and literature.
This isn’t a new concept. I’ve been getting the same line from people at least several times a year. “Do something important!” “You were meant for better things!” I’m here to tell you, right here, right now, that there is nothing better, nothing more important that I can do with my life.
Of all my choices – and I had many choices – I chose teaching. And every day I choose teaching.
That said, I’m back to blogging with a more refined purpose. My goal here is to work to end the assumptions that teachers are either not good enough to do something else or that they’re just waiting around for something “better” to come along. I won’t write about teaching every time I write, and I’ll leave most of the educational theory and sharing of lessons for Equality 101, but I want to write here to give you all a little insight into my life and my work, and I want to show you all how feminism and human rights play out in my life and my work.
I’m excited to be back to the blogging community, and I’m excited about this new path for my writing.
It feels good to be back.
Yay! Glad you’re back. 🙂
Brava!
Hopefully doing better things is exactly what you just outlined. If our society had a better view of teaching and who should be teaching our youth, we’d be in a better place.
Glad that posted this. Teaching is so important and we need to remember this. You get it. You teach on the frontlines–high school. K-12 need great teachers, too.
Yay! Welcome back 🙂 Can’t wait to see what you’ve got for us next!!
What a fabulous post. You are absolutely right.
I’m glad you’ve chosen to stick with teaching! We need great teachers like you. I think that there is nothing better than teaching, even after getting a master’s in English. Really.