Understanding Teaching

The Day to Day Life and Career of a Teacher

No two teaching careers are the same. The way you teach and pursue your career is unique to you. By choosing a teaching career, you bring your full self to the school community: your personality, your experience, and your ambitions.

Teaching Enables You To

elevate your life, transform others’ lives

give back to your community

expand your career and work path

experience a diverse community of future Minnesotans, be a part of the solution for education in this state

A teacher is a compass that activates the magnets of curiosity, knowledge, and wisdom in the pupils.

Terri Guillemets

“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.”

Albert Einstein

“2 teach is 2 touch lives 4 ever”

Author Unknown

"Be all that you can be. Find your future--as a teacher."

Madeline Fuchs Holzer

"Whoever first coined the phrase 'you're the wind beneath my wings' most assuredly was reflecting on the sublime influence of a very special teacher."

Frank Trujillo

“To stimulate life, leaving it then free to develop, to unfold, herein lies the first task of the teacher.”

Maria Montessori

The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate “apparently ordinary” people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people.

~K. Patricia Cross

Teaching is One of the Happiest Professions

Myth 1

Anyone Can Teach

Wrong! The idea is nonsense - try organizing a child's birthday party or chaperoning a high school dance!

Myth 2

Teacher Preparation is Not Much Use

Wrong! Studies over the last 30 years show that fully prepared teachers are more highly rated and more effective students.

Myth 3

Teachers Don't Work Hard Enough

Wrong! Teachers have little time during the day for planning, locating materials, talking with parents, meeting individually with students, or grading papers, they do all of these things after school hours, typically well into the evenings or on weekends.

Why Choose Teaching