Teacher Magazine recently ran a series of three first-person narratives called "Take this job and love it." In each, a teacher described how she had discovered their perfect grade level (elementary, middle, high school) for teaching.

I had always expected to be a high school teacher, but I was assigned to student teach in a 7th and 8th grade classroom, and discovered despite myself that I loved working with middle school students. On the other hand, after four years teaching 7th and 8th grade, I hit a wall and ended up, like so many teachers in their first five years, out of the classroom.

Was it the grade level? I do wonder sometimes how things might have been different if I'd started out working in a high school.

How did you choose your grade level?

Labels: conversations