What If Every Teacher Was Just Trying to Save the Kid They Once Were?

I’m not asking you to believe this, just consider it. Toy with the idea for a moment. Let it roll around in your mind.

What if every teacher, deep down, is still teaching the kid they once were?

The Kid I Was

I remember staring at the classroom clock, watching the second hand crawl. I wasn’t a bad kid, just done. Bored. Restless. My mind was anywhere but the worksheet in front of me.

School felt slow, predictable, and painfully unfun.

So now, as a teacher, I build every lesson for that kid, the one who needed movement, laughter, competition, and something to feel emotionally. Every game, every project, every “crazy idea” I try in my classroom is really just me reaching back through time, trying to make school what I once wished it could be.

Over the years, I’ve started to notice something: a lot of teachers do the same, just in their own way.

Who We Were Shapes Who We Become

Maybe the child who needed love and consistency becomes the teacher who makes every student feel seen. Maybe the kid whose home life was chaos becomes the teacher who makes school feel peaceful and safe. Maybe the kid who needed things to be simple becomes the teacher who values structure and clarity. And maybe the kid who couldn’t sit still becomes the teacher who fills class with energy and fun.

We all teach to the needs of our younger selves. It’s a beautiful thing, but it’s also worth questioning.

The Pattern We Don’t Talk About

Here’s the uncomfortable part.

Many teachers were really good at school, and that’s a wonderful thing. Their strengths, organization, reliability, curiosity, and academic skill, are vital to any great school. But when that’s the only kind of story represented in the profession, something important is missing.

Those teachers often expect their students to be like they were: attentive, compliant, motivated by gold stars and grades. So they teach the way that worked for them: quiet classrooms, direct instruction, routines that reward the rule-followers. And the kids who aren’t like that? They drift.

When most of a profession is made up of people who succeeded under one kind of system, it’s easy to assume that system is what works best. But what if it only works best for the kind of kid who already fits it?

Research on teacher identity supports this idea. Our personal histories shape how we teach (Day, 2004; Beijaard et al., 2004). Even if the data can’t capture it perfectly, most educators recognize it intuitively: we teach from experience, not theory.

We Need All Kinds of Teachers

If every teacher teaches the kid they once were, then our schools need all kinds, those who loved school, and those who didn’t, so that every student can find someone who understands them.

We need the misfits. The late bloomers. The ones who struggled to care, to sit still, to fit in. The ones who failed a class, talked too much, doodled on tests, or got sent to the hallway.

These teachers know how to reach the kids who are tuning out right now, because they get what it feels like to hate school and still want more from it. They know how to make learning matter to the kids who think it doesn’t.

The goal isn’t to replace one type of teacher with another. It’s to expand the circle, to build a profession where every kind of story, every kind of struggle, and every kind of success has a place in the classroom.

So If That’s You…

If you’ve ever felt like school wasn’t built for you, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it’s waiting for you to come back and rebuild it.

We need you, the ones who doodled in the margins, who asked too many questions, who got bored, who couldn’t sit still. We need the kids who didn’t always fit the mold, because those are the voices that might just be missing in classrooms today.

If school felt hard for you, that’s exactly why you’d make a great teacher. You know what it’s like to struggle, to be misunderstood, to wonder if you belong. You’d bring compassion that can’t be faked and creativity born from necessity. You’d reach the students who look around the room right now and think, “This isn’t for me.”

Teaching doesn’t need perfection. It needs people who remember what it’s like to be human inside the system, the ones who can laugh, adapt, and find new ways to make learning matter.

So maybe this is your sign. Maybe it’s time to step forward, to Lead, to Inspire, and to bring your story to the classroom. The next generation of students doesn’t just need more teachers, they need more of you.

References

Day, C. (2004). A Passion for Teaching.

Beijaard, , Meijer, P. C., & Verloop, N. (2004). Reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 20(2), 107–128.

O’Connor, E. (2008). “You choose to care”: Teachers, emotions and professional identity. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(1), 117–126.

Reeve, J. et al. (2023). Personal factors influencing autonomy-supportive teaching. Frontiers in Education, 8, 10402274.