It’s taken me a while to come around to this, but I’m very passionate about education.
Except I have no desire to be a teacher. I think.
Growing up with my mother, a passionate and excellent high school teacher, has instilled in me a passion for learning and growing. I never thought about it like this until I was older.
I used to love hanging out around the high school and going into her classroom during the summer to help her fix up her room and organize her teaching materials. (Truth is, I still do.)
I have these fond, fond memories of her older students, their accomplishments and their amazing high school experience. I looked up to her students, I looked up to her as a teacher and she set the bar for what I expected out of my education at Brunswick High School.
I can definitely say I was not disappointed when I spent my four years there. I received an excellent and nourishing education. My teachers all had a desire to be there, a desire to teach and a desire to lead. They wanted to see us succeed and that was crucial in my success.
However I don’t think I can rest all of that on my teachers. A small but important part of that was my passion, my excitement around being there and being involved.
I was a part of that high school years and years before I ever attended it. I’ll always be a part of Brunswick High.
Now, looking at a year from graduating college, I’m confused. I love school, but do I want to continue onto grad school straight away? I’ve always had a next step to follow, a certain future and now I don’t. Do I want to lock myself down for a few years again?
I have a lot of thoughts about education. Some high school students go to college because they think they have to. College students my age decide on grad school maybe because they think they have to go. Not a lot of students have a love for school these days. I think if more students from a young age loved to learn, and loved a learning environment, we wouldn’t think we had to continue on the grad school.
Maybe we’d continue on because we want to further our education more.
And I think, if we all had that passion to learn and that excitement and desire to be in school, education on the whole would change from the inside out.