I couldn’t wait to get out of school. In fact, I was so motivated to graduate before my 17th birthday that I took four courses of my most hated subject - history - eight semesters- in one year.

If I think back on teachers, there are more wretches and hags than inspirations, although I do think my high school English teacher, Paul Knauf, was a good model for me. One of the few items of knowledge I recall learning was when he took a few of us to a media station to learn the makings of  broadcast news and radio.

My disillusionment with school began in the fall term of my Kindergarten year, when the teacher dastardly deceived us. She said we were “going to do first grade work tomorrow” so of course I went home and announced to my mother and sister that tomorrow we were going to learn to read. A profound disappointment that was to last throughout my entire compulsory education set in when she put us to work with green construction paper, cotton, glue and glitter tracing our hands in the shape of a mitten we could adorn with a glittery cotton cuff. I have seldom felt so chagrined as I did bringing that one dimensional mitten cut-out home to my mother and sister.

Disillusionment turned to jadedness. During my last year of high school and the famous four courses of history, I learned the fine art of plagiarizing, or semi-plagiarizing, withough really having to learn anything. On some level I wished the teachers would call me to account, really challenge my learning but no, they were duly impressed by my most measly efforts.

Things changed in college where, despite having what I felt was very little fundamental knowledge from my hitherto education, I was able to both study and learn. Unlike my roommate who had graduated ninth in her class of 3,500 students in Chicago, I had no trouble adjusting to the rigors of a grueling 24-7 academic life.

I had never thought of becoming a teacher. A forest ranger, yes. A photographer, yes. A social worker was what I landed on, even though my mother was of the strong opinion that I should not subject myself to the dreariness of working with have-nots all the time. My decision to teach came quickly and easily though, due to my encounter with a girl who looked like an angel, I kid you not - she had golden diaphonous hair, chubby cherubic arms and cheeks, and she played the harp. I wish I could remember her name.

She was sent to me for help in French. Since I had good grades and took honors courses, I was given a job in an experimental program designed to procure peer tutors for students. This girl was a music major and she needed to know how to pronounce French song texts. I helped her and, voila! I was hooked on teaching. It was magical to me the way understanding materialized in her as a result of my input. Teaching her was the most fun I had ever had in school.

I continued tutoring and switched to education, with a double major in English and French. This was during a time when teachers were not finding jobs, but I never went unemployed. I even declined my first job offer, the kind of job-from-hell they assign newly educated waifs like I was: three levels of French, junior and sophomore English, college prep English and Shakespeare. This was in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. If the poor waif they hooked into that job still lives, I hope she sued them for malpractice. There is no way a teacher can properly educated students with a load like that.

I used to tell my students who asked why I became a teacher that I had always wanted to act in front of a captive, if not captivated, audience. Teaching is a lot like acting; it taxes your nerves, memory, self-confidence and improvisational performance skills. On top of that, the audience is always potentially hostile. Yet I have always enjoyed teaching. I haven’t always enjoyed the system, school as an institution built on the assembly line model. Worst is the endless reform public education is subjected to when much would be solved by reducing the teacher-student ratio in something akin to the one room schoolhouse.

I no longer engage in school leadership or reform committees. I have the privilege of just teaching. I find my subject to be an endless source of learning for myself, and I get to teach at a level in which competency is demanded of both me and my students in a system that is rigorous enough to produce tangible results. Sometimes I envy those with jobs they don’t have to think so much about outside of work hours, who do something concrete and practical like tending a cash register. Yet if I left teaching what I would miss would be how the job demands that I engage in what my college professor called the journey toward understanding and knowledge; a journey that becomes an end in itself. You never finish learning when you are a teacher. It is a privileged lifestyle.