Reasons I Teach

Addiction.

OK, a longer post might be necessary.

When I entered Bellevue Community College in 1987, I took Darkroom Lab Techniques and Intro to Shakespeare. I wanted to start out with the easy stuff, and two years of photography made lab techniques no problem. Shakespeare is a given in K-12, so that was in the bag. During the second week of classes, my English instructor wrote a note on the board that the Reading Lab and the Writing Lab each needed tutors. "Great!" I thought, "A job." My mother had drummed into me—her father had done it to her in his day—grammar. I dared not confuse my subjective and objective pronouns for fear of even the most gentle correction.

I was brought on as a tutor in the Writing Lab, where I worked with numerous students who taught me. I helped them with their writing, but they helped me with something more important: They taught me that I had a talent for helping other people understand things, and that is the one true duty of all teachers. There is nothing in my life that compares to the joy of recognizing comprehension, particularly in one who had assumed the material was beyond reach.

Teaching, for those of us who believe passionately in the work, is an addiction. We want to be there for that moment of learning, that simple event more elegant than the best explanation of the Big Bang, and more powerful. We want, quite simply, to bear witness to those great moments that the students generate, godlings making their own universes.