Day 5: Why Teach? Finding Your Purpose and Your Way
Updated: 12 hours ago
An Invitation to Aspiring Teachers, Student Teachers, and Those Considering a Career in Education
Practical ways to build relationships, understand students, and increase participation and responsibility in Welcome back to SWAY Canada — A SMART WAY to Learn, Earn, and Play!
In our first four lessons, we explored Practical ways to build relationships, understand students, and increase participation and responsibility in classroom learning.
Now I'd like to turn our attention to you.
Why do you want to become a teacher?
It's a simple question, but your answer may change throughout your career.
Teaching can be exciting, exhausting, frustrating, creative, and deeply rewarding—sometimes all in the same day.
After 33 years in the classroom, I still believe teaching is one of the world's greatest professions. But I didn't always know I wanted to become a teacher.
In fact, I stumbled into the profession.
I Never Planned to Become a Teacher
If you've read my earlier stories, you'll know that I struggled academically as a child.
I wasn't the student anyone would have predicted would become a teacher.
After earning my Bachelor of Arts, I considered following in my father's footsteps into medicine. My father was an oral surgeon in Montreal and a man I greatly admired.
I worked in hospitals, including St. Michael's in Toronto, where I gained valuable experience caring for people facing difficult circumstances. If you want to learn something about empathy, working in a hospital can teach you a great deal.
But my attempt to pursue science didn't go as planned. I remember sitting in a university physics lecture at Concordia, feeling completely lost. Eventually, I had to admit that medicine wasn't the right path for me. That was a difficult realization. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do next.
A Conversation That Changed My Life
An old friend studying education at McGill University suggested I consider teaching.
Teaching? I had never seriously thought about it.
Given my own school experiences, it seemed unlikely. But I applied to McGill's education program and was accepted. Little did I know that this decision would shape the next 33 years of my life.
My First Question: What Do Good Teachers Do?
During my teacher training, I wanted to understand the practical side of teaching.
How do good teachers manage a classroom?
How do they motivate students?
How do they organize lessons?
How do they know whether students have learned?
I remember asking one of my professors about the tricks of the trade.
I was looking for practical advice—the small things experienced teachers do that make a difference. I didn't get the answer I was hoping for. So I kept asking questions.
What do good teachers actually do, and how can I learn to do those things well?
That question stayed with me throughout my career.
It's also one of the reasons I eventually created SWAY Canada.
Welcome to the Real Classroom
My teaching practicums introduced me to a world very different from university lecture halls.
During one placement in Montreal, I found myself teaching older students, some of whom appeared much more interested in life outside school than in my lesson.
On my first day, just as I was about to begin, an explosion rang out in the hallway.
Someone had set off a smoke bomb. I remember seeing the smoke through the glass in the classroom door. What a welcome to teaching!
It was an early reminder that a lesson plan doesn't guarantee a lesson will go as planned.
You need to know your subject, but you also need to build relationships, establish routines, respond to unexpected situations, and make good decisions under pressure.
And sometimes, you need to ask for help.
Teaching Is More Than Delivering Curriculum
Over time, I came to believe that teachers need to develop skills in three interconnected areas.
Relationships
Students are more likely to participate when they feel respected, supported, and included.
Learning Processes
Students need opportunities to organize information, ask questions, practise skills, reflect, and demonstrate understanding.
Responsibility
Students can gradually take greater responsibility for their behaviour, work, and contributions to the classroom community.
These ideas became foundational to my teaching.
They also influenced SWAY Canada's development.
Three Pillars of SWAY Canada
SWAY Canada offers three interconnected approaches to teaching and learning.
1. The WAY Game
A collection of tools and activities designed to encourage participation, questioning, teamwork, and student responsibility. You have already seen WAY Cards, Game Cards, and videos of my students playing.
2. SMART Digital Lesson Planning
Digital tools and templates that help teachers organize instructional materials, activities, questions, and learning processes. The goal is to make planning more useful and reusable—not simply to produce more paperwork.
3. Entrepreneurial Project-Based Learning
Opportunities for students to apply their knowledge through meaningful projects, products, services, and real-world experiences. Students can learn to plan, collaborate, solve problems, and understand how their work serves others. You don't have to adopt all three approaches.
Begin with the tool or technique that addresses a problem you are experiencing in your classroom.
Your Teaching Philosophy
Eventually, aspiring teachers are asked to explain their philosophy of education.
What do you believe about children?
How do students learn?
What responsibilities belong to the teacher?
What responsibilities can students gradually assume?
How will you know whether your teaching is effective?
You don't need a perfect answer today.
Your philosophy will develop through study, experience, reflection, and the people you encounter. But it's worth beginning now.
Focus Questions
Why do I want to teach?
What qualities do I admire in the best teachers I've known?
What classroom challenges concern me most?
How can I encourage students to become more independent learners?
What teaching practices would I like to experiment with during my training?
Your Learning Activity: Create a Personal Teaching Game Card
In Lesson 2, I introduced personal Game Cards as a way to communicate who you are and what you stand for.
Let's take that idea a little further.
Create a Game Card titled:
"The Teacher I Hope to Become."
Include:
Three values that will guide your teaching.
One challenge you expect to face.
One practical classroom technique you'd like to try.
One question you still have about teaching.
One image or symbol representing your purpose.
Share your card with a classmate, mentor, or trusted colleague if you wish.
Then revisit it after your next teaching experience.
What has changed? What have you learned?
Watch, Discuss, and Reflect
I've included a video with this lesson:
An Invitation for Teachers to Return to the Classroom
This video explores some of the challenges of teaching and why I believe the profession remains worthwhile.
A Case Study for Teachers in Training
This video explains why I believe aspiring teachers can benefit from exploring and evaluating practical classroom tools before beginning their careers.
As you watch, ask yourself:
Which ideas do I agree with?
Which claims would I want to investigate further?
What could I realistically try in a classroom?
What questions would I ask an experienced teacher?
You don't have to agree with everything I say.
Think critically. Make your own decisions. Develop your own way.
A Word About Artificial Intelligence
Today's teachers have access to technologies I could only have imagined when I began my career. AI can help generate lesson ideas, organize information, suggest questions, and adapt instructional materials. But it can also make mistakes, produce weak activities, or overlook important classroom context. The teacher remains responsible for reviewing the results, protecting student information, and deciding what is appropriate.
Throughout SWAY Canada, I'll show you opportunities to use technology to support learning. The goal isn't to replace teachers' professional judgment.
It's to help teachers use their knowledge, creativity, and time more effectively.
Start Before You Feel Ready
If you're a student teacher, you have a valuable opportunity to experiment with experienced educators' guidance. Choose one technique from SWAY Canada. Discuss it with your mentor teacher. Try it when appropriate. Observe what happens. Ask students for feedback.
Then improve it.
You don't need to transform an entire school or convince everyone to join you.
Start with one classroom problem and one practical idea.
Your Challenge
Before continuing, complete this sentence:
"I want to become the kind of teacher who..."
Write down your answer.
Keep it somewhere you can revisit throughout your career.
Teaching will challenge your patience, creativity, confidence, and judgment.
You'll make mistakes. You'll learn from them. And if you're fortunate, you'll discover that your students teach you almost as much as you teach them.
That's part of what makes this profession so remarkable.
What's Next?
Day 6: CAP Notes — Helping Students Capture, Process, and Remember Learning
We'll explore a structured approach to lesson summaries, reflection, and student-created learning materials.
Brian McCarthy
Retired Teacher and Founder, SWAY Canada
Learn to Play — Play to Learn.
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