School! Lessons, games, clubs, homework.
A bell rings. You go to a classroom. A bell rings. You have lunch.
A bell rings. You go home. But one day you go to school for the last time. What to do after that? You realize that the time to choose one job out of the hundreds has come.
It’s going to be a hard choice and nobody can make it for you. Before you can choose, you ask yourself quite a lot of questions. What do you know you are good at? What do you enjoy doing? Perhaps you enjoy working with your hands. Or you may prefer using your head — your brains.
Are you interested in machines? Or do you like meeting people? It’s difficult to know all the answers to these questions until you have left school and actually begun work. Many young people consider teaching as a career. It’s not surprising: after your parents your teacher may be the most important person in your life. With all the teachers you meet, you think there isn’t anything you don’t know about the work. That’s where you are wrong, since only those who are in it can appreciate it.
Have you ever asked yourself why most teachers are so devoted to their work and privately think, though they may not like to admit it openly, that they serve humanity doing the most vital job of all? Those of us who spend our days in schools know how rewarding the job is. At the same time it is not easy and a real challenge to your character, abilities and talent, as teaching is a constant stream of decisions. Children in your classroom aren’t just boys and girls. Every one is a unique individual who has never been before and will never again exist. If you like people, you will love teaching. To be a good teacher you must be genuinely interested in what you are doing.
The most important things in the world are awareness and learning — wanting to know every day of your life more and more and more. Because every time you learn something new you become something new. An ignorant teacher teaches ignorance, a fearful teacher…
