Courage to teach, courage to learn!

By Cynthia Grimm
College of Education
Long Island University, C. W. Post
February 17, 2011

I’ve been trying to think about who I would bring to class for my role model. After many weeks of thought, I can honestly say that I have no role model for becoming a teacher. Like all of the career twists and turns I’ve taken, I came to this decision fully on my own. In fact, my extended family thinks I’m crazy to go back to school now. They don’t see why I “need” to be a teacher at all. My husband has a good job, I earn enough for extra grocery money, they think I should be content. To spend all that money and time at 41 they see as foolish, even an extravagance. What they don’t see is that sometimes you just have to do what feels right, even if it’s not an easy path to take. In discussing this with my husband, he said I spent two years telling him all the reasons I couldn’t go back to school. In that same amount of time, I could have earned my Master’s degree. It was through many discussions with him that I finally came to realize that it was not a foolish choice to spend our money on my education. Teaching would be a career that would provide me a means to use my talent to help others and provide a steady income for our family.

Looking back at my education, I had some good teachers and some not-very-good-at-all teachers. I didn’t go into this profession to emulate any of them. I think I'm really just becoming a teacher to complete me.