I have been a teacher for far fewer years than most of the ones that I know. Still, it has been long enough that I’ve been asked more than once by students why I became a teacher and I have never come up with a satisfying answer.

I did not first become a teacher because of any great passion for education. Rather, I wanted to travel after graduating and teaching was a thing I could do in order to sleep in a bed, eat food, wear clothes and occasionally pay for a plane ticket. It could have been anything. Forestry in particular seemed very appealing at the time, but someone offered me a job taking care of children before anyone offered me one taking care of trees and that was that. For the first two years or so I found that I enjoyed it well enough but never felt particularly committed to the cause, long term. Convenience and chance, then, are the answers to the question and I’ve given them before. Students know though. They roll their eyes. They understand, if they are old enough, that convenience and chance are correct, but regardless of age the students all know that they aren’t the real answers. They’re brush-offs – dodges, designed to move the class on to the next thing. They don’t answer the real question. The real question is less polite. The real question is, “Why, Mr. Harlan, are you still a teacher? Out of all the places to be and things to do, why are you doing this, here?”

To my shame, I do not remember the student’s name, but I remember distinctly her lack of enthusiasm.

“My mother sent me here,” she said. She was nine or perhaps ten, and it was the first day of a week-long Studio holiday drama camp. I’ve lost my phone twice since then, but I believe we were set to do something by Roald Dahl. We had begun as usual for those one-week programs, first talking about what do acting and theater mean anyway, then letting the students share their previous related experiences and why they had come. Everyone else had come of their own volition and while some were more outgoing than others, all were reasonably excited.

She did not share the feeling.

“Ok. Well, let’s see how today goes and, who knows? Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

The details of that class blend together for me with the first days of many other classes so I can not say for sure whether we started with Zip Zap Zop or with the Mirror Game. We may have fought over a magic marker or perhaps we drew a forest in the air and crept through it. We did begin reading our script for the week, and by the time our three hours were up the students were moving around and looking at each other and playing actions and laughing and trying and generally having a good time. At the end of the class I did something I often do and had all the students sit down and one by one, share something new they had learned about acting or theater that day. One boy talked about using different rhythms and volumes when speaking. One girl had learned how difficult it was to pay attention to someone else’s movements and her own movements at the same time. Another student told the class about how actors need to look at things which aren’t really there.

When it was our involuntary member’s turn to share she said, “I learned that actually, acting is fun.”

I believe I responded that, “That’s a great thing to learn!”

After everyone left, I went to the restroom and my eyes teared up and I pumped my fists in the air and laughed.

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