Why I Teach
I teach because I like the pace of the academic calendar. June, July, and August offer an opportunity for reflection, research and writing.
I teach because teaching is a profession built on change. When the material is the same, I change — and, more important, my students change.
I teach because I like the freedom to make my own mistakes, to learn my own lessons, to stimulate myself and my students. As a teacher, I’m my own boss. If I want my freshmen to learn to write by creating their own textbook, who is to say I can’t? Such courses may be huge failures, but we can all learn from failures.
I teach because I like to ask questions that students must struggle to answer. The world is full of right answers to bad questions. While teaching, I sometimes find good questions.
So teaching gives me pace and variety, and challenge, and the opportunity to keep on learning①.
However, the most important reasons why I teach are that my students grow up and change in front of me. Some have become doctoral students with excellent success and found good jobs; some have become interested in the urban poor and served as civil rights lawyers; some have decided to finish high school and go to college.
But teaching offers something besides money and power: it offers love. Not only the love of learning and of books and ideas, but also the love that a teacher feels for that rare student who walks into a teacher’s life and begins to breathe. Perhaps love is the wrong word: magic might be better.
I teach because, being around people who are beginning to breathe, I occasionally find myself catching my breath with them.
[294 words]
行文點(diǎn)評(píng)
文章第一段到第四段都采用了“I teach because...”的句型開頭，句式統(tǒng)一，在內(nèi)容上構(gòu)成了并列。每段的第一句即為該段的主題句，先指出自己想要當(dāng)老師的原因，接著再具體進(jìn)行解釋。在第五段中，作者用So概括了上述原因，再次重申“Why I Teach”，呼應(yīng)主題。第六段開頭借助“However”一詞的過(guò)渡，指出教書最重要的理由，和前文構(gòu)成了語(yǔ)義上的遞進(jìn)。文章最后一段還是用I teach because...結(jié)尾，與段首相呼應(yīng)，使文章顯得有始有終。
