And yes, I did have to look up the word acrostic.

I have been teaching for three years, and I left a very short engineering career to teach. People assume I entered teaching for all the sentimental reasons you’ve been touching on. But that’s not really the story. I did not become a teacher for the nobility of it, though I did want to do something meaningful with my working life. I probably could have found something meaningful to do as an engineer. Really, I think the challenge of teaching effectively and creatively is what drew me to teaching, and I know that is what will keep this job interesting and worthwhile for me.

My own education as a teacher never involved any of these feel-good ideas either. My mentor teachers were not sentimental about teaching. They didn’t write poems. They never talked to me about nobility. The teachers and professors who lectured to me about education theory never talked about nobility. If anything, the message was, “It is hard to be a good teacher. You need to know what you’re doing, and you must always strive to get better. You have to be a professional.”

My mom and my mother in-law are both elementary school teachers. Both love love love love love their students. They both read endlessly about teaching, mentor new teachers, and constantly strive to improve their own practice.

In the high school where I teach I am part of two departments — science and math. I swear, these people don’t have a sentimental bone in their bodies. The majority would scoff at poetry of any kind.

A bigger problem for me, at least in my school, is negativity toward students — their behavior, their attitude, their clothes, their stupidity. Honestly, I’d much rather work with someone who is a little sentimental about the job than someone who hates kids. Right?