Planning a BA in Education but having second thoughts? What my tutoring gig taught me
The crumbs of cheddar goldfish are still stuck in the grout of my neighbor’s kitchen table when Lila crumples her reading worksheet into a ball and hurls it under the couch. It’s 10 a.m. on a Saturday, I’m three months out from getting my acceptance letter to a BA in Education program starting this fall, and I can feel my throat go tight. I’d practiced this lesson the night before, pulled out all the tricks I’d read about in my intro ed textbook for kids who mix up b and d. Nothing worked. Lila’s been stuck on the first paragraph of a Junie B. Jones story for 20 minutes, and I just made her cry.
I’ve wanted this degree since third grade, when Ms. Henderson, my teacher, figured out I had undiagnosed dyslexia and stayed after school twice a week to work with me before anyone even noticed I was failing. I got a full acceptance, even a small scholarship, and the envelope’s been taped to our fridge for two months, behind my mom’s grocery list and my little brother’s soccer schedule. But almost every day, I have that little voice in my head: but what if you can’t actually do this? What if you’re just romanticizing the idea of teaching, and you’re no good with real kids when they’re upset?
I stood there for a minute, staring at the crumpled worksheet under the couch, and I almost apologized and called it a day. Instead, I sat down on the floor, not in the chair at the table, and said, “I still mix up b and d sometimes. Last week I wrote ‘bad’ as ‘dab’ on my coffee order at the campus café.” Lila stopped sniffling and peeked at me from where she’d hidden her face in her hoodie. “Really?” she said. I pulled out my phone and showed her the photo I’d taken of the cup to send to my friend. She laughed, the wet, snorty kind of laugh that only 10-year-olds can pull off.
I’d brought a small bin of play sand to practice writing letters, and she’d knocked it over when she threw the worksheet. We grabbed a broom and swept the sand off the floor together, no lesson attached, just sweeping. She told me about how the other kids in her reading group laugh when she stumbles, and her teacher tells her she just needs to try harder. I didn’t give her a big speech about being smart or capable. I just said, “That sucks. That happened to me too.” By the time we’d thrown the swept sand back in the bin and grabbed more goldfish, she was ready to try again. She got three words right in a row that day, no crumpling required.
That’s the part no one talks about when you’re planning an education degree, right? Everyone tells you the pay is bad, the parents are difficult, the admin will drive you crazy. That’s all true, I guess. But my hesitation isn’t about any of that. My hesitation is that I’ve been sold this idea that good teachers are born with some innate ability to keep every lesson on track and make every kid feel good instantly. I thought I had to be perfect before I even stepped into my first college education class.
I’ve talked to other people my age who are in the same spot, interested in education but scared they’re not cut out for it. The best thing I’ve done isn’t read a hundred blogs or talk to a dozen advisors. It’s this 2-hour a week tutoring gig with Lila. If you’re on the fence, do that. Find a kid who needs help, one-on-one, not a big group where you can hide. Show up even when you don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t get paid for this, it’s just volunteer work through the local rec center, and it’s taught me more about teaching than any textbook I’ve read so far.
The concrete things I’ve learned that stick are small, and easy for anyone to test, whether you’re a future teacher or a parent helping your kid with homework. When a kid shuts down, stop the lesson. Do something mindless together – sweep, sort stickers, get a snack. You don’t have to fix their frustration before you keep going. Just be in the messy part with them for a few minutes. When you mess up, or don’t know what to do next, just say “I’m still learning how to help you, that’s all.” That works way better than acting like you have all the answers. I used to think I had to pretend I knew what I was doing to earn a kid’s trust, but it turns out the opposite is true.
Last week, Lila showed up with a beat-up picture book she’d picked up at the library sale, and she read the whole first chapter out loud to me. She stumbled on three words, but she didn’t crumple anything. She even laughed at the joke in the book. After she left, I stood in our kitchen staring at my acceptance letter on the fridge, and for the first time in two months, I didn’t hear that little voice saying but what if?
I still haven’t sent in my deposit. I still have an open acceptance for a communications degree that feels safer some days, the kind of degree where you don’t carry other people’s bad days home with you. Some Saturdays I leave Lila’s house feeling like I’m wasting my time, like I’ll never be the kind of teacher Ms. Henderson was for me. But most days, I leave with a crumpled dandelion she picked for me on the walk to her house, or a unicorn sticker she stuck on my notebook, and I think that’s the point. You don’t get a BA in Education to be perfect. You get it to learn how to show up, even when the worksheet gets crumpled and the sand is all over the floor. I still don’t know for sure if this is the right choice. But right now, that’s okay.
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