Why Teach?

I was driving a semi-truck during the winter of 2009-2010 all over the USA and Canada. January of 2010 I discovered the YouTube video you will see below and I knew I had to make a change. I went to Taylor Mali’s web site and discovered that he had set a goal of reaching and creating 1000 new teachers through his poetry. I am not a poet, never have been a reader of poems, nor was I ever a very serious English student, but I was profoundly moved by the YouTube video of his poem, “What Teachers Make” and realized that I needed to finish what I had started back in the fall of 1977. I sent Taylor Mali an email and told him that his poem inspired me to go back to school and finish my degree and become a teacher and he emailed me back to say that I was #400 on the way to his way to 1000 new teachers. By May of 2010, I had purchased a laptop, begun my own quest for an online degree program that I could take online and by August of 2010 I was back in college taking classes to become a teacher.