A Better Teacher, A Better Parent
Dear B & V, Unlike teaching, parenting isn't a major someone takes in college to prepare themselves to be a mom or dad. Parenting just happens, purposefully or accidentally. When a child is born, parents are thrown into parenthood with only the model of generations before them. Some models are good and some not so. Most people, consciously or subconsciously, have taken bits from how they were raised and used it to build their own parenting philosophy. The preparation to become a teacher is quite opposite of preparing to be a parent. Many teachers earn an undergraduate degree in education: taking classes, observing teachers and student-teaching under the mentorship of a veteran teacher. My journey was a bit more unconventional. I threw myself into teaching as a grad student, discovered I liked it, became a substitute teacher and was offered a job teaching without knowledge of educational pedagogy. Therefore, my path into teaching more closely aligned with parenting; tr