Dear Prospective Teacher,

You have studied, thought, planned and decided this is the job for you.

You are wrong.

Teaching is not a job, it is a life. It wakes you in the night wondering how to reach the unreachable. It pokes you in the ribs and tells you to correct a child who is misbehaving in the grocery store. It makes it difficult to name your own children as every name has attached to it the eyes of a student you taught.

But these are not the reasons why you teach. You teach because you love The Learning.

Teachers will tell you stories with names, descriptions and deep emotion about a few children they will never forget. The story of Ruben who came on the school bus all alone on his first day of kindergarten and of his life living in a car. Or about Yul who came to class without a single word of English and taught us all about our language with humor and incredible intellect. Franklin, a young man of 8 who had walked all the way from Central America and was fascinated by desks, light switches and pencils. Amanda, a high school student who missed so much school her teachers couldn't recognize her and how the promise of a school laptop in exchange for attending school changed her educational path. And Jennifer, the 7 year old who falsely accused her teacher of child abuse to get the attention of her father.

Maybe you are thinking about the rewards; there are many. You envision you will be wrapped up in warm hugs and love. But the real world is different. The toothless grin of a first grader when they spy you in a local store and they pull on their parent's sleeve to point you out, the hand-drawn pictures just for you. The biggest rewards are the light bulbs, the I-get-its which ignite learners' eyes with the spark of a new understanding.

This is The Learning.

There are heartbreaks too: the family you had to report because you suspected abuse, and the child you never saw again. The children who have learned that learning isn't cool or that being smart is dumb. The children who think they are stupid or worthless because they believe the words they have heard. And the children who don't even try.

Teachers open worlds of possibility by being open to their own learning.

In the end, we don't choose to teach. Teachers teach because we can't imagine doing anything else, because The Learning is our calling.

With respect and great hope,

A teacher