[jasoneckert]

This past Thursday (April 20) was my 25th work anniversary teaching at a community college. And while I agree wholeheartedly with everything in this blog post, they were not the reasons I set out teaching in this space.

25 years ago, I knew I wanted to build great teaching skills and genuinely make a difference in people's lives. But after spending almost a decade in the university space (and teaching a few courses), I realized that my abilities would be better spent teaching job-focused IT and programming courses at community college for two main reasons:

1) University students often come from privileged homes and/or have more supports while attending school, which makes my role as teacher less valuable to their development, and

2) Most community college students are focused on landing a job at the end of their program, and I felt I would make a bigger impact working with this drive in the classroom, while keeping current with the industry.

I should also note that it's very important to work in the industry while teaching for personal and academic development. I've taken on 1-2 extracurricular projects each year since 1998 that were outside of my comfort zone, and I don't think I would have taught for as long as I did if I didn't do this.