Goal: Why I Teach

3 min read

Welcome to Cycle 7 of The 30 Goals Challenge: Make it Meaningful!

If your actions in the classroom inspire children to achieve more, question more, and dream more, you are indeed worthy of the title “Teacher.” – Robert John Meehan

Goal: Share with a community of teachers why you teach.
Accomplish this goal: We are revisiting this goal from 2013, due to a new project by Teacher 2 Teacher where teachers share why they teach, using the hashtag, #WhyITeach.

Get your copy of The 30 Goals Challenge for Teachers or Learning to Go!​

 

Why Do I Teach?

In 2013, I created this presentation to outline the reasons I have been an educator, since 1994.

Being a teacher is one of the toughest jobs in the world. It requires an enormous amount of compassion, self sacrifice, and inner strength. Teachers go through the same amount of schooling as other professions that pay much more and offer more freedom and benefits.
I met my first batch of students in 1994. The inner city church I attended, hosted  classes for kids. They needed someone to teach the class. My sister and I volunteered. We had 100 children in one room we taught for an hour, twice each week. During the first month, they pretty much ran wild. During the first class, one girl did cartwheels around me for most of that hour while I tried to tell the other 99 to settle down. My church, though, did give us textbooks, and the previous teacher began to give us ideas. We were even sent to learn about using puppets, drama, etc. for teaching children. The church ingrained in us that the purpose of being a children’s church teacher was to help the children have fun and show them how much we care about them.
These kids came from very difficult home situations. Many of their parents were either in jail or halfway houses, recovering drug addicts, teenagers, gang members, or absent. They were poor. Eventually, I learned classroom management and techniques that enabled me to see the beauty of what a teacher gives. We had fun, I had those teachable moments, and I got plenty of hugs and smiles.

​​​Earn a badge for completing this goal! 

 
I love to teach badgeNew to The 30 Goals Challenge? Each year, teachers worldwide aim to accomplish 1 to 30 goals that transform their teaching. Join the movement by accomplishing any goal from any of the cycles then letting us know through a blog reflection or status update on our Facebook community or on Twitter,@30GoalsEdu . At our official site, 30Goals.com, find all the goals, participant reflections, badges, and get your copy of The 30 Goals for Teachers: Small Steps to Transform Your Classroom workbook. ​

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