Reasons for teaching

Choosing a career path is a big decision that can be scary for someone how is uncertain of what they want to do with their life.  Choosing teaching for anything other than that it is your passion to inspire and educate youth could be detrimental for your future students.  I think that if someone who is not passionate about teaching makes the decision to become a teacher they better be willing to give it their all.  Teaching is a big responsibility and it requires a lot of time and energy and someone who does not have a passion for teaching will not necessarily put all the effort in that the students deserve.  While reading the first chapter I came across a chart showing the most popular responses for why people teach.  The chart showed that the majority of people  teach because they desire to work with young people.  The second most popular response was value or significance of education to society.  The third most popular was interest in school matter.  These are all great reasons to start teaching and I am happy to hear that these are the reasons most teachers decide to teach.  Some of the less popular responses where long summer vacation, influence of family and job security.  I was happy to hear that these where not the main reason people where starting a career in teaching.  If you are only teaching for these things then it is very possible that you won't be doing everything you can to give the students a good education.  I decided to teach while I was at a summer camp with my friends.  We would play different sports each day and what came easily to my friends and I seemed really difficult for others.  I saw some of my new friends sitting on the side lines because they didn't know how to play or because they felt they were not good enough.  I tried to help them the best I could because I wanted everyone to get as much out of the activities as I was.  I have always been a very physically active person and get a lot of enjoyment out of exercise.  I used to find it hard to imagine why some people did not feel the same way.  Sports and physical activity in general have such a difference in my life and I have gained so many positive things from them that I want everyone to feel this way about them as well.