We Do Not Simply Become Teachers From helping my children learn to understanding learning

 

Introductory Note to the Reader      How did I become a teacher? Interestingly enough, I have always considered myself what I call an a posteriori language instructor: someone who discovered the profession through experience before acquiring formal qualifications in education. When I entered university, I had no clearly defined professional destination. My one ambition was to learn English, a decision I had made while still in high school.      Toward the end of my final year of secondary school, I enrolled in a rather disappointing language academy whose name I can no longer remember. The real turning point came when I entered university and began seriously developing my command of English. One opportunity led to another. I started tutoring students, eventually found employment at a language academy managed by an Iranian gentleman, and later learned from one of my professors that a cultural center in my hometown in Costa Rica was looking for English teachers.      It was there that my eyes truly opened to the complexities of teaching. I began questioning how languages were learned, how lessons should be organized, and what distinguished explaining English from actually teaching it. Eventually, I became a language professor at a private university, even though I had not yet earned a degree in education. A gentleman working in the university's Human Resources department subsequently helped me obtain a full scholarship to pursue a master's degree in education with an emphasis on English Language Teaching. That opportunity profoundly transformed my professional trajectory.      Looking back, I realize that I became a teacher long before I formally studied how to become one. And having raised four children alongside my wife, helping them navigate their school years, I also learned that supporting one's own children academically is not necessarily equivalent to managing a classroom of thirty or more learners.      A question from FutureLearn's Building a Teaching Career course prompted me to revisit this journey. Does parental involvement in children's education make someone more capable of teaching professionally? My experience suggests that the answer is considerably more complicated. This essay is my attempt to explore that question while reflecting on a profession I never initially planned to enter, but one that eventually became an essential part of who I am professionally. Jonathan Acuña Solano

We Do Not Simply Become Teachers

From helping my children learn to understanding learning

	Abstract Becoming a teacher is not necessarily the result of a deliberate career decision or a linear process of professional preparation. Drawing on personal experiences as an English language instructor, university professor, and parent, this reflective essay examines how professional teaching identity develops through practice, formal education, and sustained reflection. Inspired by a question from FutureLearn's Building a Teaching Career course, the discussion challenges the assumption that parents actively involved in their children's schooling are inherently better prepared to become professional teachers. It distinguishes informal educational support from the pedagogical, interpersonal, and organizational demands of teaching diverse groups of learners. The reflections are informed by scholarship on teacher motivation, reflective practice, situated learning, and professional identity, particularly the contributions of Watt and Richardson, Schön, Lave and Wenger, and Beijaard and colleagues. Ultimately, the essay proposes that becoming a teacher is neither a single achievement nor a completed transformation, but an evolving process through which experience, scholarship, and human relationships continually reshape professional understanding.	Keywords: Teacher Identity, English Language Teaching, Reflective Practice, Professional Development, Parental Involvement, Teacher Motivation, Lifelong Learning
	Resumen Convertirse en docente no siempre responde a una decisión profesional previamente definida ni a un proceso lineal de formación académica. A partir de experiencias personales como profesor de inglés, docente universitario y padre de familia, este ensayo reflexivo examina cómo se construye la identidad profesional mediante la práctica, la educación formal y la reflexión continua. Inspirado en una pregunta del curso Building a Teaching Career, de FutureLearn, el análisis cuestiona la suposición de que los padres involucrados activamente en la educación de sus hijos están necesariamente mejor preparados para ejercer la docencia. Se establece una distinción entre el acompañamiento educativo familiar y las exigencias pedagógicas, interpersonales y organizativas que supone enseñar a grupos diversos de estudiantes. La reflexión se fundamenta en los aportes de Watt y Richardson, Schön, Lave y Wenger, y Beijaard y sus colaboradores, particularmente en relación con la motivación docente, la práctica reflexiva, el aprendizaje situado y la identidad profesional. Finalmente, se plantea que convertirse en docente no constituye un logro definitivo, sino un proceso de transformación permanente en el que la experiencia, el conocimiento académico y las relaciones humanas contribuyen a redefinir nuestra comprensión de la enseñanza.
	Resumo Tornar-se professor nem sempre resulta de uma decisão profissional previamente definida ou de um percurso linear de formação acadêmica. Com base em experiências pessoais como professor de inglês, docente universitário e pai, este ensaio reflexivo examina como a identidade profissional se desenvolve por meio da prática, da formação acadêmica e da reflexão contínua. Inspirada em uma pergunta do curso Building a Teaching Career, da FutureLearn, a discussão questiona a suposição de que pais ativamente envolvidos na educação dos filhos estejam necessariamente mais preparados para exercer a docência. O texto distingue o acompanhamento educacional familiar das exigências pedagógicas, interpessoais e organizacionais envolvidas no ensino de grupos heterogêneos de estudantes. A reflexão fundamenta-se nas contribuições de Watt e Richardson, Schön, Lave e Wenger, e Beijaard e colaboradores, especialmente no que diz respeito à motivação docente, à prática reflexiva, à aprendizagem situada e à identidade profissional. Por fim, o ensaio propõe que tornar-se professor não representa uma conquista definitiva, mas um processo contínuo de transformação, no qual a experiência, o conhecimento acadêmico e as relações humanas contribuem para redefinir nossa compreensão do ensino.

“We teach who we are.” — Parker J. Palmer

“Perhaps we do not simply become teachers. We keep becoming them.” — Jonathan Acuña Solano

This reflection began with a question in a FutureLearn course I recently started, Building a Teaching Career. The question asked whether parents who have been to school themselves and who actively follow their children's schooling are more likely to become better teachers, or more inclined to choose teaching as a profession. I found myself thinking less about whether parents make good teachers and more about my own journey into teaching, and eventually into English language teaching as a field of professional study.

I must confess that there are questions that look simple until we begin answering them. The FutureLearn question seemed, at first, to invite a fairly straightforward response: parents who are closely involved in their children's schooling presumably have a better understanding of education and might therefore be more likely to become teachers. Perhaps they have already acquired some experience explaining things, helping with homework, encouraging practice, organizing projects, or dealing with the frustrations that accompany learning.

But the more I thought about it, the less convinced I became. Being a parent, helping someone learn, and being a teacher are related experiences, but they are not the same experience. A parent may spend countless hours supporting a child's education without ever developing an interest in teaching as a profession. Conversely, someone may become a remarkably committed teacher without having children or without having had particularly close involvement in their own children's schooling. Perhaps, then, the more interesting question is not who becomes a teacher, but how someone gradually becomes a teacher.

The parent as an accidental teacher

I suspect that most parents have experienced a form of informal teaching. We explain homework. We help with projects. We look for information when we do not know the answer ourselves. We find another way of explaining something when our first explanation does not work. We encourage children to practice. We remind them about deadlines. We celebrate good results and sometimes help them recover from disappointing ones.

In these moments, parents become teachers almost accidentally. Yet I would hesitate to say that these experiences necessarily prepare someone for professional teaching. There is an important difference between helping one child understand something and creating the conditions for twenty or thirty learners to understand something. There is a difference between knowing your child's personality, interests, fears, and frustrations intimately and trying to understand a group of learners whose needs, motivations, abilities, expectations, and previous experiences may be dramatically different.

This distinction becomes particularly interesting when we think about homeschooling. A parent with some background in pedagogy may be able to create a very meaningful learning environment for a child. The intensity of that relationship can be a tremendous educational advantage. But placing the same parent in a classroom with several learners would change the nature of the task considerably. And this happens because the classroom introduces complexity. The teacher is no longer simply responding to one learner. The teacher is creating an environment in which multiple learners can learn together. That is a very different responsibility.

My experience as a parent

My own experience makes this question particularly difficult to answer because, when our four children were young, I was already an English teacher. My wife and I worked together to make sure that our children were keeping up with what was expected of them at school. We helped them with projects, gave them additional practice when necessary, and tried to make sure that extracurricular assignments were completed on time. My experience as a language teacher inevitably influenced the way I approached some of these situations.

But being an English teacher did not magically make me an expert in everything my children needed to learn. Nor did being their father make me a better English teacher. What parenting did give me was another perspective on learning. I began to see more clearly that learning does not happen simply because someone has explained something well. A learner has to make sense of it, connect it with previous knowledge, find some reason to care about it, practice it, make mistakes, and eventually use it with increasing independence.

That realization may seem obvious to an experienced educator, but it is precisely the kind of understanding that becomes more complicated through experience. And this is where my experience as a parent began to intersect with my development as an educator.

Teaching is more than explaining

One of the easiest misconceptions about teaching is that teachers are people who know something and explain it to people who do not know it. I certainly thought about teaching in somewhat different terms when I was beginning my career. With time, however, I began to understand teaching less as the transmission of knowledge and more as the design of opportunities for learning.

This distinction matters. A teacher needs subject knowledge, of course. But subject knowledge alone does not explain why some learning experiences become meaningful while others disappear almost immediately after a lesson ends. Teaching also involves understanding learners, interpreting what happens in a classroom, making decisions in response to unexpected situations, adjusting explanations, designing activities, assessing learning, giving feedback, and continually questioning whether what we are doing is actually helping learners move forward.

Donald Schön's (1983) work on the reflective practitioner is useful here. Schön challenged the idea that professional expertise consists simply of applying theories and techniques learned beforehand. Professional practice also involves responding intelligently to situations that cannot be completely anticipated in advance. Professionals learn through their encounters with the complexity of practice itself. That description resonates strongly with teaching because a classroom rarely behaves exactly as we planned it on paper. And perhaps this is one reason why experience matters so much.

From English teacher to educator

My own professional journey did not begin with a grand plan to become an educational specialist. I became an English teacher first. Only later did I move more deeply into the study of education and ELT. Looking back, I find this sequence important. My formal studies did not create my interest in teaching from nothing. Rather, they gave me concepts, theories, vocabulary, and frameworks with which I could begin to understand experiences I had already been having in the classroom. In that sense, education did not replace experience. It helped me interpret experience.

This is one of the reasons I find the work of Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop (2004) particularly relevant to my own story. Their review of research on teachers' professional identity shows that teacher identity is not simply a fixed characteristic that someone possesses. Their work draws attention to identity formation, teachers' personal practical knowledge, reflection, self, and the contexts in which professional identity develops. They also emphasize teachers' stories as an important way of understanding professional identity.

That last point interests me enormously. Perhaps we understand who we are as teachers partly by telling the story of how we became teachers. My story did not begin with a degree in education. It began with English. And then, gradually, English teaching became education.

Why do people become teachers?

The FutureLearn material also reminded me of something that is easy to overlook: people enter teaching for different reasons. Watt and Richardson's (2007) FIT-Choice research is particularly useful here because it moves beyond the simplistic idea that people become teachers merely because they "like working with children." Their framework identifies several influences on teaching choice, including perceived teaching ability, intrinsic value, personal utility, social utility, prior experiences, social influences, perceptions of the demands of teaching, and even the possibility of teaching as a fallback career.

This makes sense to me. People rarely enter a profession for one reason. Some may genuinely enjoy working with learners. Others may be attracted by the intellectual dimension of a subject. Some may want to contribute to society. Others may have had inspiring teachers themselves. Some may discover teaching almost accidentally. Still others may arrive after another career.

And motivations can change. The reason someone enters teaching may not be the reason they remain. That distinction is particularly important in my own case. I did not remain in teaching simply because I had once decided to teach English. Over the years, the profession itself changed the questions I was asking.

How do people learn languages? Why do some activities generate genuine engagement while others produce compliance? What makes feedback useful? How much technology is actually necessary? How can learners become more active participants in constructing their own learning? What does meaningful learning look like? These questions gradually moved me from teaching English toward studying teaching and learning.

We learn to teach by participating in teaching

There is another idea that helps me understand this trajectory: learning as participation. Lave and Wenger's (1991) work on situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation describes learning not simply as acquiring information but as becoming increasingly involved in a practice. Newcomers gradually move toward fuller participation in communities of practice.

Although their work was not developed specifically as a theory of teacher identity, I find the idea useful when thinking about my own career. I learned about teaching by teaching. Then I learned more about teaching by studying teaching. I learned from colleagues, students, classrooms, successes, mistakes, professional development, research, and eventually from participating more fully in the broader professional community of ELT. At some point, I was no longer simply an English teacher who happened to be interested in educational theory. I had become an educator whose particular field happened to be English language teaching. That distinction may sound subtle, but for me it represents a significant transformation.

We do not simply become teachers

Perhaps this is why I am reluctant to think of teaching identity as something that begins when someone receives a qualification. A qualification can certify preparation. It cannot finish the process of becoming. The teacher who enters a classroom for the first time is not the same teacher who walks into that classroom ten, twenty, or thirty years later. The difference is not simply the number of lessons taught. It is the accumulation of interpretations, relationships, questions, doubts, discoveries, disappointments, adaptations, and moments of insight.

Professional identity develops through all of these experiences. And perhaps this is why reflection matters so much. Reflection allows us to look backward without simply becoming nostalgic. It allows us to ask what previous experiences mean now that we have more experience with which to interpret them. When I think about helping my children with their schoolwork, I do not see those moments as evidence that I was already a professional teacher at home. I see them as part of a much larger story about learning.

When I think about my first experiences teaching English, I do not see them as an incomplete version of the educator I would eventually become. I see them as necessary beginnings. And when I think about my later studies in education and ELT, I do not see them as the moment when I finally became a "real" teacher. I see them as another stage in learning how to understand the work I was already doing.

The parents who never become teachers

Returning to the FutureLearn question, I would therefore answer it somewhat cautiously. Parents who closely follow their children's schooling may indeed develop useful insights into learning. They may become more aware of the effort required to understand something, the importance of encouragement, the frustration that can accompany difficulty, and the satisfaction that comes with progress.

But none of this means that they will necessarily become teachers, or that they will necessarily become better teachers than parents who were less involved in their children's schooling. And perhaps we should not expect them to. A parent can make an extraordinary contribution to a child's education without ever entering a classroom professionally.

Parents can help children discover connections between what they learn in school and the world outside school. They can encourage curiosity. They can help children find meaning in apparently abstract knowledge. They can teach persistence. They can model the idea that not knowing something is not a failure but an invitation to learn. These are profoundly educational acts. But professional teaching requires another layer of knowledge, responsibility, and continuous development.

A career is not a straight line

When I look back now, I realize that my career did not follow a straight line from wanting to teach → becoming qualified → becoming a teacher. It was much more organic. There was the English teacher. There was the parent helping four children navigate school. There was the student of education. There was the ELT professional. There was the university teacher. There were the countless students and colleagues who changed my understanding of what teaching could be.

And there is still the learner. Perhaps that is the part of the story I value most. After all these years, I am still taking courses, reading, questioning, designing, experimenting, reflecting, and occasionally discovering that something I thought I understood needs to be reconsidered. Maybe that is not evidence that I have failed to arrive. Maybe there is nowhere to arrive.

Perhaps we do not simply become teachers. We keep becoming them. And perhaps the most important characteristic of a teaching career is not that we eventually become the teacher we imagined we would be, but that we remain sufficiently curious to allow our students, our experiences, our studies, and our reflections to change the teacher we are becoming.

San José, Costa Rica

Sunday, November 15, 2026

Blog Post #603

📚 References

Beijaard, Douwe, Paulien C. Meijer, and Nico Verloop. (2004). “Reconsidering Research on Teachers’ Professional Identity.” Teaching and Teacher Education, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 107–128. Portal de Investigación de TU Eindhoven

Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge University Press

Schön, Donald A. (1983), The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books, Google Libros

Watt, Helen M. G., and Paul W. Richardson. (2007). “Motivational Factors Influencing Teaching as a Career Choice: Development and Validation of the FIT-Choice Scale.” The Journal of Experimental Education, vol. 75, no. 3, pp. 167–202.

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