Teachers, masochists?

I very often get asked the question But What Made You Decide To Teach!?

I am qualified in a scarce field. I have an honors degree. I am an Occupational Therapist for goodness sake, and the world wants us. As for Teaching; The salary is not worth it, and the psychological and emotional abuse and drain definitely is not. As a teacher I can see why the world should see us as masochists.

But it is at times like these that I wonder at the world. I wonder, why am I sitting here, at 12 pm, and trying to formulate a lesson on human relations? Why am I loosing sleep trying to come up with an effective way of combating racial hatred amongst these snotty and catty teenagers? Why do I care when a child doesn’t know the difference between nation building and structural development? Why do I even care, and Why, O Why am I wasting my time, my own time, the time in which I should have time to be me, on all of this? Is it because I hope to be a hero? Or is it because I have seen the other side? Is it because I love them, or is it because I love what I see they can be? Is it because I myself have tasted a sort of freedom: freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom to be me without the hang-ups of for example a racially segregated society? Is it because My best friend is marrying my neighbor, of which one is pitch black, and the other blond and blue-eyed? And because I know things can be different? Should I care when they don’t know the difference between gender or your biological sex? And why should they know about Chairman Mao, what happened at Auschwitz and what the Holocaust stands for? Why should they not be allowed to live in Lala-land?
Or is it just me?

There is a 16 year old boy, whose girlfriend is 30. He is on stronger stuff than just pot, and gets into serious fights. His family is more than just messed up. And you realise this kid does not even know what love is. He never tasted it. When Dove Landau asked Kitty Hansen why the Prince of the Danes wore the star of David on his arm the day Hitler ordered the Jews to do so, she told him “well if you don’t know why, maybe that is what is wrong with you”.



I don’t know, and as a teacher you often ask the question: is it really worth it? Was I this bad? Was my arguments this rudimentary?

There are a lot of things I don’t know. But I know this: where my teachers failed, my family stepped in. Where my family missed, my church and faith fulfilled, where my church didn’t suffice and my faith was down, significant elders caught me in their hearts and hands, and where the world failed, God just never did. Maybe it is just because some people don’t have that. Or that I want to become part of that process.

So am I desperate? Yes I am. I am desperate to see leaders with integrity. I am desperate to see a diminishing in crime, I am desperate to see youth who understand who and what they are and become what they can. I am desperate to love South Africa. I am so desperate, that I decided to teach.

Or was it just a challenge?