Well, I have worked as a teacher in Texas, in England, in Germany, in Nigeria and in Spain, and it is true that teachers are under appreciated, underpaid
and overworked everywhere; it's not so bad in Germany now that I think about it.... I can't say I am a vocational teacher, meaning that I would not do what I do if I didn't get paid for it (I'll never be a millionaire but the job pays the bills) , and I have never shared those idealistic notions according to which "teachers are generous spirits who devote themselves to shaping the minds and hearts of the children and in doing so are able to touch the future". Nope. Real life is not like that at all. I never really gave it a second thought though, I have two Masters and a PhD and it was always kind of taken for granted that I'd become a teacher, mainly because I kept hearing that my choices would never allow for a different career, and before I knew it ten years had gone by and I must confess I don't regret a single moment. Now I think of my own experience working with all sorts of students and in very different environments and under very different conditions, from elemmentary school to PhD programs, from cold and small classrooms to high tech language labs, and I still don't feel like I'm changing the world or anything like that, and I still believe that there are better jobs out there. But there's something about teaching, there are moments in a classroom that certainly make teaching very special: I taught Maths (not that I am particularly mathematically inclined, mind you) in 3rd grade in Texas and I remember I got a thrill when my kids learned to multiply and I realised I had been the one who had taught them how to do it , or when one of my current students walks up to me all excited because now he can actually understand the words of his favourite song (something by Katy Perry I guess), or when I ran a creative writing workshop for young women in Nairobi and I could see how my coaching helped them turn their ideas into meaningful stories right in front of my eyes. Geez, I'm getting all emotional here....

The thing is that I don't really think there's nothing as rewarding or as inspirational as teaching, and somehow it just makes up for the rest. Plus we've got lots of holidays, don't we?