When I Realized I Wanted to Become a Teacher

I think I first decided to become a teacher at about the same time that I was writing, that I learned to write. And I had never made that connection until right now. I think it was around fourth grade. And I don't know, I think that one thing that stands out in my mind is my fourth-grade teacher asking us, "How many of you want to go to college?" And I raised my hand up very proudly. College was not something we talked about at my house. Anyway, I looked around, and I was the only one with my hand held very high and she said something like, "Well, we'll always need people to clean the toilets," which she might've thought was something to motivate us, but it made me feel pretty bad to hear that, that my classmates were destined to do that.

Now, why did I decide that I wanted to be a teacher? I think when I first went to first grade and I saw teachers as being all powerful and doing such cool things like writing on a board and having a pointer and giving out books and all that stuff and of course teaching us and I have always loved learning, I think it was sort of natural, but in terms of going to college to actually become a teacher, I didn't know until pretty recently why that had happened, why that connection of being a teacher and going to college was made.

And it was my sister who told me one day that it was our cousin, Tito, who came from Puerto Rico at the age of 17, I think, or 16, ironically because his family, Puerto Rico, wanted him to take care of his sister who was in college already and living in New York; she was fine, but they thought she needed a younger sibling to take care of her. So he went to school, he did really, really well in high school and then went on to I think City College. And when Lydia and I were at his 80th birthday party, I think, she turned to me and said, "This is why I think we decided to go to college because of Tito, because he's 10 years my senior, so he's now 92 and he was saying how education was so important." And Lydia said when he got to New York, we were 10 years younger, Lydia's a year older than me, and we probably saw, "Look, here's our cousin. He's going to college." So that had never occurred to me before. So I think that that really was a sort of catalyst for me to want to go to college, definitely.

Lydia at the time had not really wanted to go to college. By that time we had a television set and we were watching the shows where women were secretaries and Lydia wanted to be an airline stewardess and she went to her guidance counselor. She was at Erasmus Hall and her guidance counselor said, "I don't think you're really college material." Lydia had not done as well in school as I did and that got her so angry that she decided to go to college. So sometimes it works sort of reverse psychology, but I was committed from the time I was very young that that's what I wanted to do.