Young Adults’ Exploratory Teaching Experiences

This article examines how precommitment encounters with teaching can reshape pathways into the teaching profession, as well as why a “teaching before deciding” approach may offer a critical response to the systemic challenges facing teacher recruitment, development, and retention. Our research chronicles exploratory teaching experiences (ETEs). Across the country, young people are finding their way to teaching not only through conventional preparation programs or emergency credentials but also through a wide range of exploratory encounters that allow them to discover teaching before committing to it. In two-hour Zoom workshops, we guided recent ETE alumni to craft 150-word micromemoirs of consequential moments from their exploratory teaching experiences. Memoirs were written to be oriented around how young people make sense of teaching through exploratory experiences. The micromemoirs reveal that the participants experienced significant personal and professional growth and came away with formative insights into the possibility of becoming a teacher.