Recovering My Soul

Teachers (proper teachers that take up the mantle out of self-curiosity and care for the education of others, not those that realize shortly after their first assignments that teaching isn't truly what they want to do) see everything. The collective knowledge through observation of the generations of teachers in our human world is astounding. They see what parents don't. They observe patterns students don't realize they display. Teachers are seers with the ability to help guide and mold us. Sometimes, their observations are so acute that one immediately dismisses the suggestion of a career out of fear ("That's too close to home." "That's too obvious, and would be too easy to achieve; there must be some sort of struggle!") or disbelief that someone known for a year or less can pinpoint one's destiny. Either way, one such observation has followed me throughout my life, beginning as far back as third or fourth grade.
What Miss Chaplinski, my art teacher, saw in me at such an early age I will never know. Yet, it was then the potential career of teaching was first put before me. How could a child inspire such a lofty thought to a grown up that one day she should lead inquisitive minds? All I wanted to do for the majority of school years was to be an artist or an actress. Why would I want to teach, having seen how disrespectful the majority of students were to every one of my teachers? I loathed school from second grade through junior year, and only found my happiness in acting, singing, or creating art. Why would I want to spend the rest of my life there, surrounded by others who most likely felt the same as I had? It was all very funny, as teacher after teacher tried to convince me it was the path I was meant to tread.
Now, I find they were right, in a way.
Sharing the random facts I seem to collect like so much dust in a cobweb softly clinging to the high corner of an old, closed-up room gives me joy nearly everyday at work. However, what I have come to realize is that teaching isn't always the drudgery of my formative years. Likewise, I have come to accept that my teachers and mentors were all right; I am a teacher. For better or worse, I share knowledge, guide minds, and (Goddess forfend!) lead people with information. They may all do what they will with the tools I give, as I have done. My library will swell (no difference in its life from its beginning), my adventures will contain comrades, and my solitary adventures will gain an extra bit of thought for the how and why to be added to discussions, my observations will be used for guidance of others' observations; which will morph as discussions ensue. For, now I have a small group of friends with inquisitive minds, asking I teach them what I know.
I don't know anything, though.
Life, experiences, and new information changes everything.
But I will gladly share what I have accumulated. My library is available to those who respect it. My experiences are open for discussion if they will assist in those of others. I will observe and guide and mold as those who have come to me with observations and guidance. And I will do my best to be present and true to myself throughout. For, what good is a teacher who doesn't even know herself? My experiences thus far in my short time in this life are varied and deep enough to convince me that I know exactly who I am. I suppose, now, I shall add "teacher" to this list of qualifiers.