Those Who Can't...

"He who can does; he who cannot teaches."
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, 1903

Upon hearing that I've switched careers from writing to teaching, most people want to know what motivated such a drastic change. Believe me, I have asked myself the same question, particularly right around this time last year. I doubted my sanity. I missed my freedom. And there was the money. Also, it was impossible not to notice the stark difference between the brilliant (albeit sometimes socially awkward or downright outlandish) minds of the engineers and writers I had previously worked with as compared to that of The Teacher.
I have worked with some incredibly bright people: engineers, scientists, mathematicians, and writers too. Don't get me wrong. I respect and admire the teachers I work with. They are intelligent, dedicated, loyal. Good people. It's just that I'm in a different world now.
Of course, I hadn't made those observations yet when I decided to move to teaching. When I made the decision, I had never spent time teaching in an actual classroom with children. I had taught adults English as a second language at El Buen Samaritano, and it was wonderful. My students had been incredibly clever, highly motivated, hard-working adults. Most of them had 2 or 3 jobs, kids to take care of, and they were going to night-school. They had come here to make a better life and were truly living the American dream as I saw it.
Now, after teaching in the public school system, I have come to believe that these men and women are the cream of the crop. While there are lots of others just like them, they may not be representative of the population as a whole. I, naively, thought that my elementary school students and their parents would be cut from the same cloth. And while that's certainly true in many circumstances, it was, well, a silly over-generalization at best. What an optimistic fool I can be.
George Bernard Shaw said once, "A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education." This and other statements he made were indicative of the intense disgust he had for the education system. He also said, "Schools and schoolmasters, as we have them today, are not popular as places of education and teachers, but rather prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents." This idea of course should be offensive to any teacher: Being a glorified babysitter (what glory!) to keep kids out of the way instead of making an impact on their minds.
I will admit I have felt that way on a bad day: like little more than a babysitter. But on a good day, man, on a good day, it's so good. You see little light bulbs go off and you hear little exclamations under a kid's breath. They say, "Oh... I get it!" And that feels like success. I guess that feeling, those little moments, is what I thought teaching would be like. And that's what motivated the change.