I remember that when I first started teaching, after the first few weeks of total excitement came what might be called a reality check. The profession of teaching is far more complex than many people realize. To be a successful teacher, you must be a leader, a mentor, a friend and an expert. Knowing how to blend these roles into a consistent, public personality is a huge challenge, the response to which will determine your future as a teacher.

You've got style
Every successful teacher develops a teaching style. This teaching style is your shorthand way of communicating with your students, ensuring that there is consistency in instruction and creating a safe, predictable environment suitable for children and young people. Teachers who don't establish a clear teaching style tend to have short careers because if each day is completely different, the job becomes overwhelming and issues of classroom discipline and safety begin to overshadow issues of teaching and learning.

The great thing about teaching styles is there is no best way. You have to find your own style because ultimately, who you are is a cognitive and emotional link to the hearts and minds of your students.

Who are you?
Even more fundamental than teaching styles is the purpose and character you bring to the classroom. Your students look to you primarily as a mentor and a role model. Each little action you take is observed, translated and recorded by all your students. So who you are is absolutely critical to how good a teacher you're going to be.

Even though you have just begun your career, it's not too early to revisit the question of why you got into teaching in the first place. Most surveys of new teachers indicate that women and men enter the teaching profession because they desire to serve children and because they believe education is the most productive way of ensuring a better society. Sometimes teachers mention vacations and the ability to leave work at 3:30 or 4:00. These job considerations are very minor in comparison with the call of the teaching vocation.

Answering the call
Very often in our culture, people don't think of their work as a calling. For many people, their work is a means to an end. They work for a paycheck in order to live their lives. But those of us who are called to teach have a true vocation. Our mission is to increase the world's capacity for growth by enabling each of our students to fully maximize his or her talents, imagination, analytical skills and character. We are like gardeners who plant seeds in the fertile earth. Add a little intellectual fertilizer, let the sun and the rain bring life to the seeds, and then we get to watch the seeds become flowers and plants and sometimes even towering trees.

A joyful classroom
I'm not entirely clear why some of us are called to teach. Perhaps it's our own desire to nurture our own talents, perhaps it's our social commitments or perhaps it's simply a love of children. Our greatest rewards are always intrinsic; our satisfactions come from watching a child learn a new lesson, watching a student undertake an imaginative journey or watching a youngster suddenly discover the world of ideas and thought. Probably the most exciting thing in a teacher's life is to see the proverbial lightbulb go off in a student's head as they suddenly grasp the meaning of a word, the logic of an equation, or the relationship of history to their lives. Central to our vocation is that we bring a joy that cannot be measured but must be seen and felt and heard. A great classroom is a joyful classroom.

Intrinsic rewards
So, the question of why we teach begins with our character and our motivation. Because we have a vocation, we put intrinsic rewards above the extrinsic rewards of salary and status. Sometimes it's hard to be a teacher because, in general, society treats those who work with children with less respect than they treat those who are highly successful professionally or are wealthy. I am always amazed at how few teachers' voices are heard in the national debate concerning the future of the teaching profession.

Part of our vocation is to be strong in the face of this lack of social support. In most countries around the world, teachers are held in the highest of esteem; in the United States they rank far below other professions in terms of social status. Yet, does it really matter to you where you rank compared to other professions? It certainly doesn't matter to me.

Taking a stand
Like you, I also have a calling to teach that seems far grander and more important than most other activities adults do in the course of a day. We must make public our belief in the teaching vocation, we must stand up for ourselves and other teachers,and we must recognize that when teaching is turned into a job from a calling the next generation is imperiled.

It is something of a cliché to say now that teachers touch the future. But like most clichés, this one has more than a grain of truth. Teachers weave the fabric of society; they take the threads of individuals and tie them together so that the fabric is broad, colorful and enduring. Without teachers, the fabric of society would unravel almost instantly, leaving us in a state of confusion and fragmentation. So why teach? We teach because we must and we teach because we are the weavers of society.

Peter W. Cookson, Jr. is the founder of TCinnovations and the Dean of the Graduate School of Education of Lewis & Clark College. He is also founder of the Center for Educational Outreach & Innovation at Teachers College.