Nate Joseph - Todays Men Teaching

My name is Nathaniel Joseph. I'm a high school teacher at El Rabi High School in Garfield Park.

So what originally inspired me to be a teacher was the idea of working with youth. I didn't graduate from college and then go right into the field. I actually was cooking and kind of working for a living as a chef. I was introduced to a lot of young people through that job.

You're in the kitchen, you're teaching people how to probably cut an onion or how to build a stock. Those experiences were super rewarding. A lot more rewarding than just like the day to day restaurant life. I got to a point where I learned about Grow Your Own and I was like, you know what?

If I'm really gonna take this chance to become a teacher, like this is a great opportunity for me to kind of realize that dream.

So I connected to the Grow Your Own mission of being part of the community, but also being a face from the community and and kind of like being a living example of what a teacher can look like.

Some people think of education as like purely content driven. Yeah, there is that. But there's so much more around just building relationships with your students. What kind of impact are you trying to leave, you know, on on the place you live in, city you live in, the neighborhood you live in? It's never too late to try something.