Why do I want to be a teacher?

"We don't act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly.  Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit"
Aristotle.

Teaching has been my occupation for more than twenty years. I want to keep doing this job as it satisfies me, and I find it very fulfilling. When I teach I feel that I play a crucial role in the life of my students. I am responsible for finding a way to help them understand, to gain knowledge, to become better. When I succeed in tuning into my students way of thinking and lead them to form the correct cognitive structures, I feel really great.

I want to keep teaching because I feel renewed when I am with young people who possess pure and plentiful enthusiasm, and who face knowledge as something to be explored. I must admit that their humor and spontaneity makes me forget my concerns which accompany me as an adult. I can remember several instances when I left home pensive, and in a melancholic mood, and then after 10 minutes of teaching I felt optimistic and full of life again.

I insist that in my teaching role I  love coaching my students with their career choices. I am so happy when I am informed about their achievements.  I concede my feeling of pride.

I want to keep teaching because I feel that I have much more to do and to learn. I want to be a part of a great team of teachers. As a private tutor I enjoy face to face interaction with my students, but teaching a class is challenging and rewarding too.

I want to keep teaching as I want to continue improving, as a teacher. I am used to working within strict time restrictions under continuing assessment of my methods and techniques. I have come to like it. However, I feel that there are a lot of steps which I haven’t taken. There exists enough creativity within me which hasn’t come out yet. Now I am mature enough for it to so  in a consistent, and prudent way.

I love mathematics and physics, and I constantly try to pass this love on to my students. This is one more reason for me to keep on teaching. These two sciences are considered difficult, almost inaccessible to many people. My aim is to dissolve this misconception. The most important part of one’s relation to these sciences is the very first experience. A lot of care should be taken during the early school years. Physics and mathematics have their own language, and their own way of being thought about, and acted on. This can be grasped if it is taught properly. We characterize a child as clever, when they understand maths. But clever is not what you are, is what you become. 

Teaching is more challenging now than ever. Students of the 21^st century try multitasking and face multiple stimuli. Their attention is easily distracted.  Today our students live and walk with a mobile phone in their hand. They are all immersed in the internet, and struggle to accommodate all this data in their brains. Our  teaching approach is challenged to accommodate the "gadgets" of our time to an effective learning plan.  

I want to keep teaching to build upon the excessive enthusiasm of the previous decade in new Instructional Computer Technology and participate in forming a better, more effective and up-to-date exploitation of it.

Considering myself as a teacher: I think there is a long path ahead which calls for being walked along. I really want to become a (better) teacher.