Today is National Be A Teacher Day, a day representing a national initiative to spark students’ interest in the teaching profession.
For young people who feel a duty to their community, there is no better place for them to begin than in the classroom. Teaching offers an unparalleled opportunity to mentor, instruct, and inspire. Teachers function as a bastion of civilization, giving a pathway towards a truly liberal mind to students of all colors, abilities, and backgrounds.
Parents and community members can help young people choose teaching by funding scholarships that ease their student debt burden, serving on school boards and district advisory boards that improve teacher quality of life, and by deeply honoring the existing teachers in their community.
Aspiring teachers don’t necessarily need to study education at the undergraduate level. Especially at the middle and high school levels, teachers will be hired and can succeed by gaining subject-specific degrees. This is somewhat intuitive: an AP Physics teacher will only excel if they have studied physics at a high level. Young people who are unsure of their pedagogical commitment can study in a subject-specific field, and then make a decision to teach near the end of their degree program.
Classical education is currently a booming field, and the demand is so high that colleges are scrambling to keep up. Colleges like Hillsdale, Colorado Christian University, Ashland University, Concordia University, and more have begun to offer minors and majors in classical education. Scholarships and working programs to make the pursuit economically feasible abound. Leading classical schools have fellowship models that can offer an on-ramp to first-time pedagogical instruction or even a master’s degree. The American Enterprise Institute writes:
Veritas School in Richmond dedicates on-campus apartments to house its fellows, immersing them in classical pedagogy before they take on full-time teaching roles. The Brilla Schools Network’s Seton Teaching Fellowship, akin to Teach for America in the classical space, trains about 60 teachers each year in New York, Cincinnati, and Texas. Classical Charter Schools in the Bronx offers a fellowship called ClassiCorps, a three-year program in which fellows teach during the day and earn an MA in teaching at night.
Teaching can be a lifelong career, or it can be one segment of a storied life. Programs like Teach For America connect college graduates of any major with schools in need across the country. Cohort stints last for two years, give strong mentoring opportunities, and are fully funded. Graduates often find that the alumni network helps them find additional opportunities throughout their career.
Yes, teaching is difficult and salaries can be comparatively low. But a life spent threading the eye of the needle isn’t necessarily richer or more virtuous compared to the slow, significant work of shaping hearts and minds. In the heavily paraphrased words of the immortal Michael Jackson, change only comes when we are willing to roll up our sleeves and do the work ourselves. There’s no substitute for the satisfaction of a job well done.
