Education didn't just teach me how to work. It taught me how to care.
The Calling (Before I Knew its Name)
I think I’ve always known, deep down, that I would wind up being a teacher.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I think my bones knew the truth long before my brain ever did.
I loved school as a kid -the structure of it, the rhythm of a school day, the books (oh, the books!) I loved the quiet chaos of a classroom when the teacher would pair us up to review a concept. I was lucky. My natural learning style aligned perfectly with the way school was taught, and maybe that’s why I felt so at home there.
But I was not going to be a teacher.
I Was Going to be a Doctor
I was going to be a doctor. What kind of doctor changed depending on whatever book I was reading at the time – a neurosurgeon, a virologist, a general surgeon. But always a doctor.
I was deeply committed to the vision of being a doctor. I spent my high school years in Advanced Placement classes, taking extra science courses, and pulling all-nighters (If I’m being totally honest, I loved being able to say I was “pulling all nighters” when I was in high school. It felt very collegiate). Looking back at sweet, determined, very naive teenage me, I think I really just loved the idea of medical school. Medical school would mean more time inside the academic world where I felt at home.
And I would’ve made an excellent doctor.... except for one tiny, inconvenient detail.
I cannot handle blood. Or bodily fluids. Or any internal anatomical parts of the human being on the outside. There is not a single cell in my body that is equipped to handle that kind of nonsense. (Even when I taught first grade, an era in which kids’ teeth are just falling out all over the place, I had to send my students to my co-teacher when wiggly teeth were presented). Knowing this now, it’s actually hilarious that I was so convinced this was pre-ordained career path.
Even once I realized that “fixing the human body” wasn’t the right career path for me, I remained committed to the idea of medicine. I found myself drawn to the human brain. Psychology became fascinating to me – the inner workings of cognition, personality, emotion, behavior. I altered my track slightly, but finished college still on a pre-medical school pathway with a degree in neuropsychology. I was still fully convinced that I was going to make my mark on humanity by studying the relationship between the brain and cognition. (And on the plus side, there would be very little blood that I would have to handle!)
Almost eight years - between high school and college - spent absolutely certain that I was going to be a doctor. Never a teacher.
After all, I was the child of two educators. My mother taught upper elementary grades for thirty years. My father was an elementary school principal. I helped my mother grade papers in her classroom after school each day. When I fell ill at school, I slept on the floor underneath her desk while she taught. I listened to dinner-time conversations about students, classrooms, and staff.
They were incredible educators and I was so proud of them.
But it wasn’t for me.
Until God Stepped In
Until God stepped in, as He so often does.
Not long after graduating college with my degree, I found myself standing nervously in front of a classroom of students who would change absolutely everything I knew about who I was and what I wanted.
At the time, I was hired under a provisional teaching license – an agreement that allowed me to step into a classroom while committing to earn my teaching certification within a defined period of time. While teaching full-time, I completed my special education certification, followed by a master’s degree in brain-based education. Later, I earned a specialist degree in teacher leadership, strengthening my understanding of instruction, systems, and the work of supporting both students and educators.
My first teaching position was in an interrelated resource special education classroom. Over the course of any given day in this room, I served students from kindergarten to fifth grade. These were children whose disabilities made reading or math incredibly difficult, for whom writing felt like summiting Mount Everest. They had big feelings in small bodies, and they had little experience with emotional regulation. When overwhelmed or overstimulated, those feelings spilled over into tears, tantrums, or acts of destruction.
I taught students with autism whose literal view of the world was the most beautiful, precious gift. If they told me that I looked beautiful, I knew without a doubt that they meant it – there was no polite dishonesty there, no social pretense, no knowledge on “buttering someone up.” What they said was what they meant.
When Teaching was Allowed to be Human
Back then, I got to teach my students exactly what they needed.
We still had assessments and progress monitoring, but I had the freedom to make instructional decisions based on each child’s individual strengths and weaknesses.
If my students were making progress, then I was doing my job. If my students were making progress, my administration trusted me to continue.
And that freedom allowed for some of my greatest memories of my career.
We had Fun Friday – a half hour block on Friday afternoons where learning and joy co-existed. We watched book-to-film clips, and we completed crafts that required reading and following directions. We celebrated a week of effort for students who worked so hard just to do what others did with such ease.
Fun Friday was when my students got to be kids and when their learning was a celebration, not a struggle.
During the week, I would read to my students every day. We read novels at their grade level, so they could access grade-level concepts even when their own reading levels lagged behind. We discussed vocabulary and comprehension. And some days, I would read without stopping at all – because sometimes, reading should just be fun.
We would have RAD days - Read All Day. Students came to school in pajamas, with pillows and blankets. We pushed the desks aside and turned the classroom into a cozy nest of books and sleeping bags. The only rule for the day was that students had to read. And read they did: picture books, graphic novels, magazines. Just read for the joy of reading.
At that time, a reading day was often a reward for hard work. My special education students celebrated their hard work by choosing to read more often.
What is most amazing to me now, looking back, is that we were allowed to do that.
No administrator questioned the value in the time. No one ever stopped by to chastise me for wasting instructional minutes.” I never checked a pacing calendar to see if I could “afford” to let children be children.
My memories of these years feel so magical now. Not because they were easier than things are now, but because they were mine.
My teaching and my classroom management were built on relationships with the students, observations, instinct, and pure heart. I had a curriculum, yes. I had a curriculum map and end-of-year goals for my students, but within those structures, I also had freedom. I could respond to the child sitting in front of me without consulting a pacing calendar.
At that time, I felt like schools and districts still allowed for professional judgment. My administration trusted that I knew my students. I trusted myself to make sound decisions for my students. And because my kids trusted me, as well, our classroom had room for laughter, flexibility, movement, errors, joy, choice, and genuine learning that existed beyond a letter grade.
If a student needed manipulatives for months, we used them daily.
If a student needed to move in order to regulate emotions, we talked while we walked.
If a student fell asleep at their desks, I let them sleep – without fear of being questioned.
If a student completed three math problems correctly and became overwhelmed at the next seven, I stopped them, because I knew that three correct problems and a regulated child mattered more than ten completed ones.
As a teacher, my job was clear. I didn’t teach math. I didn’t teach reading. I taught students to become more independent, more confident, and more capable than they were when they first arrived in my classroom. Reading and math instruction just occurred along the way. And I was given the professional courtesy of having the freedom to get them there in a way that worked best for them.
And the progress happened. It was real.
Sometimes it was big progress, and sometimes it came in tiny steps. But we celebrated every bit of it. I showed my students what it was like to feel pride in their accomplishments, and that pride led to confidence. Confidence led to risk-taking. Risk-taking led to real learning. That academic growth showed up on report cards, but watching them evolve and grow as humans mattered so very much more.
Teaching was messy. It was beautiful. And it was human – a teacher who was allowed to be human in front of a classroom of students who were also allowed to be human.
And it worked.
I didn’t just love teaching. I loved the person I became during those years. For every child that became more confident, so did I. For every child who left the classroom having learned important life lessons, so did I. Teaching sparked my creativity, my energy, my joy. Teaching taught me to be patient, to be hopeful, and to be compassionate. Teaching placed me at the center of a miracle, grounded in something so much bigger than myself.
At that time, education didn’t just “fit into my life.” It added to my life.
When the Space Began to Narrow
I didn’t realize then that this era of my life was temporary. The freedom I had, the joy we felt, the space to teach with intuition? It was all slowly narrowing.
At first it was subtle. I don’t even think I noticed it at the beginning. It was just small shifts from year to year, small changes in expectations, small constraints being added. But over time, the landscape began to change more dramatically. As I moved into leadership as an assistant principal, I saw it even more clearly. Teachers’ freedom narrowed. Space for professional judgment shrank. Teaching with creativity and humanity was increasingly labeled resistance rather than wisdom.
My role began to feel less like guidance and support, and more like enforcement. There was less room for possibility and magic, and more checkpoints.
And the profession that I loved so dearly began to feel unfamiliar beneath my feet.
Disclaimer: The reflections in this series are based entirely on my personal experience as an educator in a single school district. I cannot speak for every district, every school, every teacher. Education is vast and varied, and the journey I have experienced may or may not match what other educators have lived. My intent is not to generalize education or to critique individuals, schools, or districts, but rather to offer an honest look at how my own relationship with education has evolved over the last 23 years. It’s an honest reflection on how that evolution has impacted my career, my physical and mental well-being, and my future paths.
I share my story with respect, with care, and with such a deep appreciation for the educators who continue to do this critical work in every corner of the world.
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