About once a year I find myself interested in joining the ranks of teachers. Typically this comes shortly after Christmas holidays or right around March break and so I know to be highly suspect of its provenance. While 13 weeks of holidays a year would be very nice, Amy kept track of her hours and found that she had worked the equivalent of 52, 40 hour weeks by early May. That was after she’d been teaching for a year. Her first year it was probably closer to February when she crossed that line.
I have come to the conclusion after a minimal amount of soul-searching that I am almost certainly not cut out to be a teacher at this point in my life. I know of myself that I am a fairly poor planning and worker-ahead. Preparatory effort is not a strength of mine as anyone who has ever been in a Sunday school class with me as the teacher can attest.
Being a person with relatively poor impulse control would also not set me up well as an instructor of youth. Amy’s grade ten science class is going to be doing some comparative anatomy dissections this year. It is apparently possible to buy a variety pack of preserved specimens (which, I’ve just discovered, they will only ship to registered educational institutions. Discrimination!). The students will be able to look at the various organ systems in different types of animals and see how they are different and what similarities exist. My immediate response to this was to try and transplant the heart of a frog into a pigeon and grab a nine-volt battery and get all Frankenstein on things. Excellent reason for me to stay out of the classroom (and probably also part of why they don’t ship these things to just anybody).
My biggest reason for not becoming a teacher is a lack of patience on my part. If I’m trying to show somebody how to do something or tell them how and they don’t get it right off the bat, I am at a loss. As far as I’m concerned, there is only one way to explain it which is the way I just explained it and if you don’t pick it up maybe it’s not for you. “Oh, you can’t factor polynomials by inspection in one try? Have you considered the arts?”