Even a cursory glance at today's public school systems reveals that there are teachers who lack any sense of a calling in their work. Teachers that turn a deaf ear to students whispering test answers to each other in class, that deliver the same canned lesson to every class each year, and that opt for the popular rather than the instructive-coloring books instead of textbooks-are legion. For them, teaching is just a job, and a low-paying one at that. This observation is supported by Walter Brueggemann's (1986, p. 19) assertion in his book Hopeful Imagination that "a sense of call in our time is profoundly counter-cultural...the ideology of our time is that we can live 'an uncalled life,' one not referred to any purpose beyond one's self." A study of first- and second-year teachers in Massachusetts confirms Brueggemann's observation, finding that only a few of the teachers surveyed regarded teaching as their calling, and most did not plan to make it a lifelong career (Peske, Liu, Johnson, Kauffman, & Kardos, 2001, p. 305). This is not how it should be. As civil rights leader Victoria Adams-Gray states, "we educators should be 'the seed people of the world'-those who prepare the ground and plant the seeds of the future. We have somehow abdicated our responsibility" (Delpit, 2003, p. 14).
Despite this disturbing trend, however, teaching is most definitely a calling. In fact, in talks with some of the best teachers, I have found that many of them knew as children that they would be teachers. One teacher stated that she used to "teach" her menagerie of stuffed animals as early as age 5, while another says that her family still laughs over her "teaching" at age 2, when she would stand up on the landing and wag her finger at them while explaining something in gibberish (Personal conversation, 2000). Still another teacher says that he used to use a stick from his backyard as a pointer and teach imaginary studen
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