"Why do you Want to Be a Teacher?"

It was one week before my students teaching at Dana Middle School was about to end.

The mentor teacher for the two eighth grade classes, Will, asked me about interviews that I was going to take.

"Well, the first question that they are going to ask you," he started off, in his imperious, mentor tone, "is 'Why do you want to be a teacher.'"

When he asked that questions, I could not answer. I could not. Not at all.

I did not know what to think. I had just thrown out three kids yesterday morning for the rampant disrespect that was taking over the students, and this after the classroom decided to bring the class size up to thirty-nine.

I was a whirling dervish of rage and trauma and fear. No one was going to get away with anything. No  more Mr. Nice  Guy, I told myself. I breathed out threats and menace as I forced students to copy pages out of the textbook.

I look back on those days at Dana. I was an awful teacher, plain and simply. I survived, barely, and I certainly had no idea who I was or what I was doing. This was a scary time, to be sitting on that desk, weeping softly because I did not want to leave Dana, wondering what on earth I was going to do after my student teaching had ended.

"Why do you want to be a teacher?" The question remained, hanging in the air, waiting for an answer to dangle from. I had nothing, not one thing to say.

Then I remembered what a judge had said about his profession. "If you want something, and you can explain why, then you really do not want it." Incidentally, he quit being a judge to go back to law practice. Perhaps I should have done the same, quit and go back to school and study to be something else.

The question remained unanswered. I did not know how to answer it. I was more interested in getting a job and getting out of my parents' house and moving on my own. To where, I had no idea.

I can look back on Dana, and take in the truth; I hated teaching. My parents  had taken me in after four years at UC Irvine, and I went with the teaching thing because I needed to do something. Furthering my education seemed liked one option. A teaching credential program was waiting for me to enroll, and the coordinator assured me that I would get in, no problem!

"Why do you want to be a teacher?" This is a question that we answered at least once a week, once a month, and in every final assignment. One lady whined in the hallway before our final interview with the instructor for the introductory class (who died of cancer the next year)."I have answered so many questions about wanting to be a teacher. I am tired of writing, telling people why I want to be a teacher."

She had pink strands dyed in her blond hair. She, like many young people in the program, were looking for a stable career of sorts. We had liked our teachers, to some extent. We liked learning. We saw no reason why teaching could not be for us. In retrospect, the biggest bad assumption that I feel for was that I would be teaching students like me. The majority of students in regular college prep courses, however, are unmotivated and unprepared people. They do not like school, and they have suffered through ten or eleven years of getting by, learning nothing, getting easy grades for it, and hating their teachers and disregarding authority figures along the way.

Teaching is not AP classes all the way. Only the old pros get the AP students, and they can be a handful, sometimes worse than the "gang-bangers".

I had no idea when I was getting my credential that I would be dealing with some of the most difficult and incorrigible of students. I had no idea that I would be dealing with unhappy and unpleasant setbacks, including students who gave themselves permission to be rude and uncompromisingly callous. I had no idea that I as a student teacher and later a first year I would be meeting up against the most oppositional of administrators, counselors, and parents, many of whom either did not speak English, or said "lawsuit" as quickly as greet me in the hallway.

"Why do you. . .?" Why, indeed. I could not answer the question because I did not have an answer. I did not want to be a teacher. I was pushed into a career by a parent, in part, who was merely interested in me getting out of the house as soon as possible, fearfully unwilling, in part, to admit that she did a poor job of living my life for me, ruining my own take, my own decisions.

I did not want to be a teacher. That was the proper answer, if I had been willing to say it. I did not want to be a teacher at all. In fact, I was never at peace as a teacher, unless I had given the students a fluff assignment that allowed them to be creative.

I could go back, knowing who I am now, knowing the peace within me that no one can take away, and easily I would rebuff the whole thing, and I would walk off the job the first chance that I could get. I do not want to be a teacher.  I want something better for myself. I want something more, something better for me life. I do not want the eight-to-three grind of students captive to the classroom because of state law, pushed into classrooms because their parents want to work or just simply do not want to raise their kids.

Will, I would say, I hate this job. I am bored or burdened. I am yelling and screaming at kids all the time. The only time that I feel in charge occurs when I am kicking a kid out of the classroom. I hate this job. I do not care if these kids can recite any of the Bill of Rights. I do not care if they learn anything or not. I cannot do this anymore. Here are the keys, there's the door, and I will never darken a school campus again.

But I was so thrilled just to have a job, so I thought. At the time, the push was to get out there and do something, to be independent. To have my own place, my own job, my own standing in the world. Such goals, however, are light and transient, without a doubt. I did not know who I was at the time. I was not even trying to figure out why I was on this earth. Without  hesitation, I can write today that I am not called to be a teacher, not the way that the state or the local school district wants me to be a teacher. Learning this lesson is good enough for me, I guess.