Personal Statement: What Does It Take To Be A Teacher

I had just finished my Intermediate Algebra class at a local community college during the summer of my sophomore year at secondary school. It was fairly challenging, exactly as hard as you would expect a new math course to be, and I was contented that it was finally over. It was not long after that I began to resent the rest of my stodgy summer. I missed waking up before dawn, I missed the bitter cold that greeted me almost every morning, I missed the diverse population of students and trying to listen in on some of the foreign students’ conversations between and after class, and most of all I missed tutoring my classmates. All of my friends thought I was crazy and even I asked myself “Why be a teacher when you can be an engineer?” Eventually I gave up on my plans of getting a high paying degree and started to plan my future out as a teacher. The first decision I had to make was “What material would I teach?” The answer of course was math, it had always been my …show more content…
I plan to answer the question, “What does it take to be a teacher?” My answer to this will be vague if anything as I have only scratched the surface of teaching. So far I have taught only a small population of students a small window of curriculum, but, it is possible to answer this question by narrowing it down a little. To start, I had to chop the infinitely large tree of teaching math into a finite number of groups which in itself was a difficult task as there was no way to do so without leaving something out. I ended up picking the three ripest fruits from the tree to answer my focus question. Firstly, a teacher has to begin somewhere; there are legal processes as well as mental preparation that one must go through. Secondly, all teachers are unique. What are the little knacks that separate good teachers from bad teachers? Thirdly and finally, how can a teacher help their students learn more