Teaching in any environment is something that isn’t just a job. No matter how long you are teaching for, whether it’s 5 minutes or 5 hours, you will still have some sort of impact on a person’s life and that is what amazes me. It could be school related or something completely random but to know that you are individually making an impact on a person’s life is the reason I have always wanted to become a teacher.
As cliche as it sounds, there was one teacher that I remember from primary school and I always thought to myself “I would love to be like you when I am older”. This teacher was my primary 3 and 4 teacher, at this stage in your life you always go through different phases of what you want to be when you were older. Before I had this teacher I always wanted to be either a policewomen, hairdresser, pilot and a teacher – all very different and random but I suppose when I was 6 years old I wanted to be random!
I remember we had a visit from a policewoman for our topic of ‘People Who Help Us’, she told us a scary story that put me off wanting to join the police ever again! Now onto hairdressing. It was school photo day and my fringe had grown so much that you could no longer see my eyes, my mum had no choice but to cut my hair. The fringe was no longer below my eyes, it was sitting diagonally across my forehead – I was scarred from going to the hairdressers ever again, so a career in hairdressing was completely out the window for me! As for becoming a pilot, I’m not really sure how I decided that I didn’t want to be one but one day it just completely went out my mind!
I think deep down I always knew that a teacher was something I would always want to be, but to be like my p3 and 4 teacher from primary school was something that I knew I wanted to happen. I formed a great relationship with her and always wanted to help her with things around the classroom – it was almost as if I felt that because she was helping me with my education I wanted to help her too as a way of saying thanks.
It doesn’t matter how old you are when you discover that you want to be a teacher, when you have your heart set on helping children with their education in the future that is the only important thing, and for me, I knew when I was 7 years old!
