Why Teach?

Teaching is something that has been apart of me my whole life. Ever since I can remember it has been classroom after classroom; not because I had to go to school but because my mother is a teacher and when I wasn't in my own class I was in one of hers.

It started when I was in high school. My mom always taught summer school, so to keep me busy some days in the summer I would help tutor her students. This was my first experience of how these students and myself can be in the same grade but clearly they were lacking in many areas to be in the same grade as myself. It was frustrating to them and myself, because for me there were some basic fundamentals that they did not have that made tutoring much more difficult. For the students, their frustration was the fact that they didn't have these fundamentals and thus made it harder to grasp many concepts.

So why teach? This question has many layers to the answer. The most important part of my answer is the fact that there are not many male teachers and its even less for male black teachers. I fell that it is important for young people to see themselves in the ones that are educating them. Teaching for me is not about just teaching but also developing young people with strong character foundations. Try to make a positive impact that could hopefully keep them on the right course.