I wish people knew what a deeply human endeavor teaching is. As a teacher, you are tasked with growing children and helping them discover their place in the world, not just filling them with facts. You work with other adults, who at the end of the day are also deeply human, with stories of their own—a million different reasons that led them to the classroom. Teachers are superheroes, but it’s our humanity that ultimately brings us together and gets us through.

Megan Fretz, Senior Fellow

The average teacher makes over 1500 decisions a day. Teachers don’t get paid for their summers!!! And we usually do a lot of work during the summer.

Zoe Vandervort, 2022 Fellow

As a teacher, you will be humbled on a daily basis; I learn so much from my students, from complex applications of machine learning to the gentle rhythm of crochet to the brutality of lacrosse.

Elle LeBlanc, 2022 Fellow

I wish people knew that it’s not just about teaching. Teaching is maybe 25% of what you do. Planning, assessing, grading, classroom management, collecting data, and communicating with parents are other parts of the job that are also important. However, the most important part about the job is building healthy relationships with your students and a lot of times this happens in moments outside of your content. You also have to keep up with the local and national context of our society in order to support your students. For example, your students may be absent for days on end because your local bus workers go on strike. How do you support those students who will be missing class? You may have students concerned about their immigration status and how they’ll be treated at school. How do you take time away from your “perfectly curated plan” to support those students emotionally? I wish people knew that you’re teaching young humans how to be positive and informed members in their society. I wish people knew that regardless of whether you teach a 14 year old or 18 year old, you’re teaching a kid and to remember that they are still kids. I wish people knew that in order to take care of your students, you need to take care of yourself first.

Sarosha Hemani, 2022 Fellow

I wish people knew that the best teachers have to sacrifice something they love in order to stay at their best.

Austyn Jones, 2022 Fellow

Teaching might have the lowest lows sometimes, but it also has the highest highs. Not enough people know the joy of a class laughing together at an inside joke or the satisfaction of seeing a student finally understanding a concept. Not enough people outside of education talk about the moment a student’s face lights up when they see you or their excitement when learning something new. I wish people would say, “Oh! You’re a teacher!” instead of “Oh. You’re a teacher.” There are plenty of lows, but I wish people asked about the highs more often.

Selendra Mullen, 2023 Fellow

Every teacher I know shows up to work every day because they care deeply about their students—because we know that education is a human right, and that having an educated and inquisitive population is essential to the future of human society. Regardless of external factors affecting the profession, teachers continue to do the work because we know that the future depends upon the work we are doing today.

Holden Anderson, 2024 Fellow

I would like people to know that the capacity for joy in this profession is tremendous! First off, I find young people to be hilarious; they make me laugh every day. Second, I recently read about the idea of “elevation,” a type of joy that comes from witnessing others’ kindness, generosity, or compassion. It immediately made me think of teaching and the interactions I see between students. Like anywhere else, if you choose to focus on the negative, you’ll surely find it—but if I am looking, I can witness an example of some good humanity every class period, and it does elevate my day. What other job has so many opportunities for this?! Third (and best of all), as teachers, we have undeniable power to cultivate more joy with students and our colleagues every day. I like to think it’s a responsibility all teachers aspire to fulfill on some level.

Amanda Eiting, 2023 Fellow

Being a teacher is not just a job; it is a way of life. Society often places immense pressure on us, expecting perfection in everything we do while also tasking us with solving the world’s problems through our students. We carry the weight of these expectations, sometimes to an overwhelming degree. I remember an evening during my second year of teaching when I was making pizza. As I slid it into the oven, it slipped and landed right on the oven door. Frustrated and exhausted, I sat down on the floor and cried. My husband found me there and asked what was wrong. Through tears, I said, “How am I supposed to teach students when I cannot even make a pizza correctly?” That moment perfectly captured the pressure and responsibility teachers often feel. We pour our hearts into our work, but it can become an unbearable weight if we do not find balance. Teaching demands so much of us, but we must remember that we are human. We have families, hobbies, and lives beyond the classroom, and it is important to acknowledge those parts of ourselves too.

Katie Ryan, 2020 Fellow

Working with teenagers can be extremely humbling, but also is the best part of the job! I’ve never laughed as hard as I do with the teenagers in my class.

Leah Alper, 2024 Fellow

I wish people knew that our jobs never end—not when the day ends, not when the year ends. We do so much more than teach, and even if we have somehow managed to input all our grades, respond to all our emails, complete all our documentation, plan all our upcoming lessons, and organize the room after a day of chaos, we are always reflecting and thinking about our students and our teaching. Even when we don’t bring work home, we do. It can be physically and emotionally exhausting, and if we show that exhaustion, it is not because we don’t want to support our students. We just need to support ourselves, too.

Kasey DiSessa, 2021 Fellow