The Most Important Lesson by Hannah

The Most Important Lesson by Hannah - October 2016 Scholarship Essay

I have been thinking about teaching as a career since I was in junior high. I have always wanted to help people in any way that I could and I figured that teaching was a great way to do that, seeing as junior high and high school are some of the most important years in life. Junior high is hard because of the shift from one classroom to multiple classrooms and classes. Students are given more independence than they have ever had before. High school is where people decide what career path they want to follow and what college they want to attend. So, teaching became something I wanted to pursue. Picking a subject to specialize in was another process. If I had to teach an academic subject, I would teach history because I have a passion for history, I had some amazing history teachers to inspire me, and if we do not learn about history, we are doomed to repeat it.
I have a passion for history that I am sure would come through in my teaching. I have always found history fascinating, every small detail and fact is enticing. While others slept or doodled their way through lectures in Advanced Placement United States History class, I hung on every word that our teacher said. I took diligent notes because I found every topic so interesting. I find it amazing that everything has a past; every historical artifact has a story to tell, if you stop and listen. Sometimes, I wish the walls in old houses could talk. What would they say? Who lived there before? What happened within those walls? History is kind of like a big detective story. It poses so many intricate questions and stories to piece together, which is part of why I like it so much
Another part of the reason I find history so interesting is because my history teachers have been amazing. My junior high history teacher was amazing; she always gave us really fun and relevant projects, so we were never just doing a ton of boring paperwork. My freshman year civics teacher was awesome as well. He always gave us complete notes and made sure that the class thoroughly understood the material before giving us any type of quiz or test. My sophomore year teacher was much the same. My junior year teacher was probably my favorite. He had all these different hats for different time periods that he would wear when he taught the class, which made it more interesting and fun. He also used to get really involved with whatever it was he was teaching. What I really enjoyed was that you could tell he was passionate about history. They all were. It is important to make the class interesting for your students and all of my teachers did that amazingly well.
In addition to the curriculum, my teachers also taught me that if we do not learn about history and it’s flaws, we will continue to make the same mistakes again and again. I am a firm believer that history repeats itself; we see it all the time. The seasons come and go, the clock always goes through the same cycle, everyone is born and everyone dies. That is just nature. But, what is not nature is the genocides, the wars, and the man made destruction. As people, we should be looking back at these events and figuring out why they happened and how they can be prevented. Otherwise, they are going to continue to happen and cause great devastation.
History has been one of my favorite subjects since I was in elementary school. It has always kept my interest when other things bored me; it gave me something to be interested in and want to know more about. I can confidently say that I believe I would make a great history teacher because of all of the positive experiences I can connect to history; museum field trips, walking the freedom trail in Boston and competing at National History Day to name a few. If I had to teach an academic subject, I would teach history because I have a passion for history, I had some amazing history teachers to inspire me, and if we do not learn about history, we are doomed to repeat it.