Do you find teaching enjoyable? If so, what makes it enjoyable?
It was fun.
A real kick in the ass. I got paid to stand up and talk about stuff I would talk about for free if they had asked me nice.
[ul]
[li]Nobody knew quite what I did[/li][li]I got to travel all over the world doing my job[/li][li]I got to meet people I would have never met otherwise[/li][li]It was fun damn it![/li][/ul]
(I was a corporate trainer for 15 years)
ETA: Yes I miss it
I like talking about books.
Getting paid very well to talk about books I’ve assigned bright young people to read?
Does it get better than that?
I’m a pedantic know-it-all with delusions of omnipotence. It seemed like a natural fit.
It is a fun gig. I get to talk about things I find very interesting, and to share that with bright young folks, who often return the favour by asking questions that force me to think or re-think about my positions.
Plus, it’s a lot of fun to see a “light-bulb” moment, when a student has a new idea, or a moment of self-teaching.
I also owe a lot to a lot of teachers over the years - in a small way, I try to pay it forward.
It is a pleasure introducing people to things you know. A few years back I taught a course for free (I am retired and have the right to teach but not the right to get paid for it) and I also give a couple lectures every year in my continuing seminar. I guess it’s the pedantic in me.
I like my students. I love my subject matter. I’m good at teaching and it feels really good to see them get it, stretch their thinking, and get jazzed by things I used to get jazzed by. I love that my job is to stay current and expose my students to challenging ideas.
I love college campuses. They’re full of energy and excitement, hope and potential.
I hate grading. “I teach for free; they pay me to grade”
As I draw closer to the finish line (I’m two or three years away from retirement, Dow-Jones willing), I’m considering becoming one of those jerks I’ve always despised, the ones who just give all A grades to everyone who attends class. It would be easier, and fun. And given the reputation I’ve earned as a hard grader, I’d enjoy seeing the looks on all their faces as the concept dawns on them that I’m suddenly easy.
I quit the job at the bakery and needed work.
It’s the kind of job that really gets its hooks into you, especially when one of your former students drops by and tells you that they’re in college now, or tells you that now they understand why you were a hardass, or calls you up just to let you know that they’re working.
I won’t do it forever, though. I hate being reminded that my government has basically zero respect for the profession and zero interest in teachers in any role except ‘scapegoat.’
Hot female students, of course.
It’s something I am really good at, and an environment where my quirks are assets: in other environments I think they’d be liabilities.
Also, a room full of people who always laugh at your jokes, even when they aren’t funny? Priceless.
Yeah, no:
I get every summer off.
I get every other holiday too, plus two weeks at Christmas and a week in March.
I have an unbelievably good union and pension.
I don’t get performance reviews.
It’s pretty easy teaching topics that can be mastered by 14 year olds.
Hmm- So I get to five years old, go to school and get Christmas and spring breaks and summers off to play outside. This continues to 17 (I graduated high school then) and so I go to a university on the quarter system with even more time off.
People with real jobs work 260 days a year, generally. Let’s see- I can’t stay a’partying at college forever. How might I avoid the drudgery of a regular job and still enjoy school-age vacation time? Teach high school, naturally.
I exaggerate, of course. I did enjoy the job usually and never complained about the pay. Unfortunately, public education has been the whipping boy for both the feds and state legislatures for over a decade now and a huge amount of nonsensical busywork has been piled onto teachers. The job is nearly unbearable in some systems. I’m glad I’m retired.
Not currently teaching. Did so as a “supplemental instructor” at my university as an undergrad, which nominally meant being a mentor that was supposed to facilitate student-led learning, but actually meant being the lecturer. I did it to get service-based scholarships which were limited to four semesters and ended up being put on the IU payroll, and stayed on for 6 years including summers. Hopefully will be there again soon as a grad student.
[ul]
[li]I turned out to be really good at it. Like, really good. I had no idea I had the ability until the position fell into my lap.[/li][li]Teaching enhances my own understanding and learning, which was good because the subjects I taught were ones in which I was inordinately interested.[/li][li]It’s also made more aware of, able to use, and proficient in learning techniques outside of my own preferences. How do I describe this process to someone who prefers audio clues or mnemonics? Who prefers real-world examples? Who is legally blind and can’t use the purely visual teaching techniques used in the textbook? Again, it often helps me learn more about a subject.[/li][li]Learning from my students. This happened a lot in symbolic logic and abstract algebra. To see an unexpected proof that works, yet follows a completely different logical road than the way my brain tends to go, is an amazing thing broadening my own understanding of the subject.[/li][li]As an undergrad, the joke that Docta G made about hot female students held true. 
I was in a strange position; I was technically their peer, yet still in a position of “power,” and the mentoring center for which I worked discouraged “student/teacher” dynamics, encouraging “peer/peer” and platonic relationships outside of the classroom. And it turns out a goodly number of students have a thing for teachers, which meant a number of those platonic relationships were fraught with unspoken tension. However, by the mentoring agreement/contract, I was free to date former students once the semester was over, and I did so; the ethical conundrum bothered me a bit, but it never affected the in-semester teaching and I do have to admit that there was a serious boost to my own self-esteem and self-image. Given the number of professors I know who have married former students, apparently this situation is almost expected. (It will be a bit weird if I end up being in grad school next year and teaching if I’m still seeing my current pseudo-girlfriend; she’s semi-joked about wanting to taking classes I teach, and I’ll have to keep her from doing so.)[/li][li]I’m an academic by nature, so being involved in academia was a natural fit. The job is more stressful than my main money-earning “career,” but more rewarding, and I get more of a personal connection with fellow teachers.[/li][li]Related to that, the networking, both with faculty and with former students.[/li][li]That awesome high I get when I see that “light bulb” moment Northern Piper mentions. That high just lasts for hours, justifies all the stress and frustration that has built up in dealing with bureaucratic stuff and students who seem to not care. I go home happy, and often wake up happy, too. It’s like it justifies my entire life, like I’ve given back a little to a system and a subject that have given me so much. [/li][/ul]
I teach college. It beats the hell out of working for a living.
Sometimes. Depends of the students, depends of the lesson…a lot of factors.
I have a day job, but in my spare time I’m a flight instructor. My students are (almost exclusively) affluent folks who can spare 6 figures on a hobby.
Why?
It’s fun and the view is fantastic.
I get to take a lot of trips that are paid for.
Some of them allow me to borrow their plane for family trips (one won’t even accept fuel money)
I can charge $50/hour and no one even blinks. This makes spending Saturday at the airport a fairly profitable hobby (for me).
Per the above, and the potential for risk, my students are *extremely *dedicated and “do their homework”.
I frequently get to deliver newly bought airplanes to their owners from interesting places. In the last 2 years I’ve been to Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Colorado. Just this week, I got asked to go fetch a plane from California.
I guess the main reason is just it’s a lot of fun.
My karate teacher had a way of explaining things that tapped into each student’s interests and style of learning. As I came up through the ranks, I consciously emulated those habits and suggestions of “try it this way” or “think of it like this” while avoiding my brother’s coaching habits of “Stop that!” and “I told you once, don’t do that!”
I started getting in a habit of thinking, “How could I teach this in a way that the student can related to it?” and soon realized I was not only learning better, but able to teach my peers better. Then I found myself applying the same analysis to my academic subjects and learning those more quickly and more thoroughly, as well. I even had the audacity to interrupt an English professor in a writing course and take over the explanation task. My fellow students quickly caught on and appreciated the change of style; the professor applauded my successful effort but cautioned me against doing the same thing with other professors, lest they bounce me out of class for insubordination or something like that.
I continued with the practice and teaching of martial arts, and as I added different martial arts to my arsenal, I found my teaching ability improved as well. I discovered I liked being a leader and had developed an engaging and humorous style of teaching that was very popular. It still amazes me that the shy kid who thought nobody liked him turned out to be a gregarious and effective teacher. I even managed to sit in to provide a few course lectures as an undergrad – one of them in a Grad level course that the professor had invited me to take in my Junior year; that was quite an honor!
I found I liked teaching so much that I jumped at the chance to leverage my teaching skills into a job that would take me to Japan. Then, when I came back to the States, I pursued grad school because I love teaching and I’m passionate about my major. Thus, it was painful to learn that research and expansion of the field is the primary goal of a PhD while teaching others the past and current state-of-the-art in the field is a secondary or even tertiary concern. That, plus a tremendous difficulty with Grad level Statistics (due to ‘math phobia’ plus a horrible undergrad foundation in the topic) basically killed my aspiration of becoming a professor.
But I still teach martial arts. That’s my other passion.
–G!
There’s a hackneyed misperception out there that, unfortunately, influences our legislators:
:rolleyes: Those who can, do; those who can’t teach.
That’s a horrifying inversion of reality that is damaging to our children and, ultimately, our society. It fails to recognize the combination of sheer talent, honed skill, and passionate commitment that quality teaching requires:
. Those who can teach, do.
. Those who can’t teach, criticize and undermine those who do.
We need bumper stickers that say that.
It’s a good thing you didn’t ask me today.
