that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool

For a very long time I have been trying to pick a major. The one thing I have always wanted to consistently do is teach, but solidifying that thought has been difficult for me to do. There have been a lot of reasons for this: family, hearing from mostly unsatisfied teachers, the salary, and what looks like never ending unemployment.

Not long ago I changed my schedule. I added two intro classes for majors that made double what a teacher makes, but I ended up dropping them. The problem? I cannot see myself doing anything other than teaching. Anytime I've told people that I want to teach I usually don't get the best reaction. People will immediately comment on the salary, say every teacher they knows hates their job, or something like that. I take things personally and for years it has been hard for me to simply push all of these comments aside. But at a certain point I have a duty to myself to pursue what will make me happy. At a certain point I need to look at it as a calling, rather than just a job.

I was on Tumblr the other day and I found this quote from CNN:

We can tell our children that school is important until we’re blue in the face, they’re not stupid. They see the loudest applause is for the kids on the field. They know teachers are paid poorly and don’t drive fancy cars. They know people plan Super Bowl parties but mock the National Spelling Bee. In other words, they see the hypocrisy, and we can’t expect society to correct itself. If we want to have any lasting influence on the way our kids approach education — the way future generations approach education — then we have to grab our pom-poms and paint our faces and celebrate intellectual curiosity with the same vigor we do their athletic achievements.

I do not think this could be more true. People push education as if it's the most important thing but if someone says they want to be a teacher they are pushed away, being told that they can do something else. Students can tell what is valued in a school. They can see that the football players and basketball players are more valued than those in math club or in the speech and debate team.

I am in an honors program in my university and there are few education majors because so many people turn from the profession. I have heard so many engineers say things like, "I would teach math if the salary was higher," or "I would teach chemistry if the job had more respect." The attitudes that this country has towards education needs to be changed. Education is the tool with which you can change the world. But if education is not valued by adults, how will children learn to approach it with the respect and passion it needs.

I plan on teaching high school. By the times students reach me they may have spent years disengaged from education, and that's a bitter pill to swallow. But I can do my part to change some attitudes towards education. I will wave my pom poms for intellectual curiosity. I will show that an education can get you places that dribbling a ball cannot.

-Tate
(I apologize if this is ranty)