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Why Become A Teacher?

OK, so this won't be the most mind blowing web site that you've ever visited, but it presents me with a great opportunity to get something off my chest about teaching and why I think it's such a great career to go into!

So, here's the thing - teaching is such an amazing profession to go into because you are basically shaping the lives of the next generation.  I still remember a teacher that I had back in school and he was an amazing guy (he was a product of the alternative teacher certification texas) who is unfortunately no longer with us, however he left his stamp on all of his students because he had such a unique way of teaching his class.

He had sunk passion, determination and brought the subject of life in such a way that inspired everybody.  funnily enough, he was my sports teacher and I can still remember to this very day in shouting " we love hills" as I was running up this massive hill in the middle of the British winter. I can tell you now -- I really don't like hills.

Anyway I digress somewhat. the reason I wanted to talk about him is because he had such a profound effect on all of his students and that must be an amazing feeling for a teacher to have.

Another one of my teachers was a German teacher and he had the same passion as my sports teacher in fact.  And he told me a very profound lesson about life -- because he was going through a massive struggle at the time and it was almost as though there wasn't the light at the end of the tunnel for him because He just seems to experience set back after setback after setback but yet he carried on fighting almost like a heavyweight boxer that is on the ropes.

Just before I left school, I found out that he had been promoted to head teacher. In the face of all this adverse that he had managed to jump all these hurdles and still get promoted to head teacher which was his ultimate goal in life and from that point forward I made a decision to live my life backwards.

So, what do I mean by that? By living my life backwards I mean this -- I look at my life in reverse, I make sure I know where I want to end up and then I plan my steps to get to the point. So what does that really mean?

One my German teacher taught me something that stuck with me for a very long period of time -- he taught me that is no good being a jack of all trades -- you need to specify you need to focus on one small area and become an absolute expert at it if you really want to achieve amazing things in life. You can't be expected to be an expert in every single subject that you try your hand at -- there simply isn't enough time to learn everything.

And then he went on to say -- and who wants to be average? Because if you look at the world now average gets you nowhere. An average Chinese restaurant has got no customers, the average singer and songwriter is struggling to make ends meet. He then said, that me ask you a question, if your world is $2000 digital cameras, which digital camera do you choose? The best one, or the third best one?

And from that point forward I realised that I needed to focus on something I needed an objective in my life and I needed to make sure that I dedicated my life to getting to that point in time because otherwise what is the point in existing to be average -- there is no point in being average -- average is not good. Standing out from the crowd is good -- so what is it that you're going to do stand out from the crowd?

And this was a lesson that my German teacher taught me. As it happens I was, and still am, crap at GermanBut the fact remains that I have changed my life because of what this guy has taught me and that's why teaching is such an amazing profession to go into because you get to shape the lives of the next generation who are ultimately going to shape the future of our grandchildren. Mainly another job whereby you have such a profound influence on people and whereby you have such control over what happens in the future.

But here's the thing -- I have a profound feeling that today's education system is too rigid. I really just don't think that it is flexible enough to educate our youth of today in a way that is going to benefit the massively in the long.

From where I'm sitting, here's what I'm seeing. At the moment we are going through a profound change in the way that business is done. Companies can be spawned practically overnight through the revolution that is the Internet -- there are no start-up costs involved, there's no reason to hire a workforce, you don't need a factory, and you don't have to spend thousands of pounds setting up a physical location. Nowadays, a business is simply a website that gets traffic.

That you will ever learn this at school -- they wouldn't teach you the power of the Internet and business hand-in-hand just like they haven't taught you how to use your money when you leave school over the last 20 years.

The most useful thing I could have learnt in school when I was at school was things like mortgages, finances, credit ratings, APR and so on. These are things that I undoubtedly will cross during the rest of my life -- these are things that make sure I don't jump into debt because I don't have a clue what's going on. This kind of education would be invaluable in today's education Society, yet where is it?

And if we haven't yet added this kind of education to our school system, what hope have we got of adding Internet business subjects to the curriculum?

The fact remains that the western world is now very much in debt and China and East are very much on the rise. It won't be very long before China is of overpowering nation of the world. Entrepreneurs are going to be what saves us From the desperate position that we are in with the economy and schools need to start breeding entrepreneurs like they're currently breeding academics.

Here's the thing -- those who are academically talented aren't those who generally go on and produce multimillion dollar companies. There have been countless incidents whereby those who are on educated have created massive companies and those who are supposedly the most intelligent amongst us have nothing to offer.

Controversial statement of the year: our education system sucks and needs to evolve.

FInally, here's a pretty cool article: http://www.squidoo.com/10-reasons-to-become-a-teacher