Why I’m an Educator: Dominik Dresel, Ed.M.’18

For as long as I can remember, I have been captivated, and somewhat  unnerved, by the inevitable finiteness of my life. In 1985, the year I was born, the statistical life expectancy of infants in my native Germany hovered around 75 years, which is approximately 900 months, or 4,000 weeks, or 27,000 days, or 650,000 hours. As a child, these numbers seemed abstract and intangible, yet they hinted at a scarcity, a brev­ity that made any unit of time valuable, and any wasting it reckless. 

I look back at this boyhood sensation with some regret — after all, could there be a better time to be idle, carefree, unrushed than childhood? — but I also remember fondly the productive urgency it instilled in me. If every hour could be spent just once, the question of what to spend it on became consequential, perhaps even existen­tial. What, I remember asking myself, was worth spending my time on? What wasn’t? And how could I tell the difference? 

During my time at HGSE, I had the privilege of attending a lecture by the late Clayton Christensen whose book How Will You Measure Your Life? has since become a nightstand staple. But even two decades before walking into his classroom, I sensed that while time is a pre­cious, fleeting currency, there is a lot of agency in the dilemma that it presents us with. To no small extent, and notwithstanding the arbi­trariness of life, it is our own volition that determines what we make of the short time we are given. And, as Christensen wrote, how we spend our time is, ultimately, who we are: “With every moment of your time ... you are making a statement about what really matters to you.” 

Much of what matters to me, it turns out, can be found in schools. At their best, schools are inclusive spaces in which curiosity is nur­tured and where young people learn to navigate the complexities of the world with both the skills and the moral compass required to lead a good and ethical life. Schools often act as anchor points for entire communities. They are places where generations intersect, where the social fabric is woven together, where democratic norms are taught and practiced. They are where good people come together to do good work. And perhaps, most importantly, they are where many of us dis­cover our calling in life. And all that matters deeply to me. 

I wish I could point to a defining, pivotal moment, a grand anec­dote, that made me decide to dedicate my life to education, first my own and later that of others. But the truth is that after thoroughly considering the question, I simply could not think of a better way to spend my precious time.

I have always been driven by an insatiable curiosity about the world and drawn to books and teachers that could help me understand it bet­ter. I love helping others quench their own thirst for knowledge and ac­company them on their path of discovery and learning. And working in education continues to strike me as a great way to make a contribution, however small, onto future generations and towards a better world. To put it simply, I got into education because I find meaning in it, because being an educator matters to me. 

On my nightstand, next to Christensen’s book, sits, idly, Andrew H. Miller’s On Not Being Someone Else: Tales of Our Unled Lives. The truth is that there are many meaningful causes to spend your life pursuing. Instead of education, I may have studied theology, learned a skilled trade, prac­ticed medicine, or farmed the land. 

But life is short, and my time is finite. Statistically, I have less than half of it left: approximately 36 years, or 400 months, or 1,900 weeks, or 13,000 days, or 315,000 hours. 

Why did I choose, and continue to choose, education? Because I’ll measure my life by whether I used those years, months, weeks, and hours in ways that mattered to me.

Dominik Dresel, Ed.M.’18, is a former Teach First Deutschland graduate, teacher, and public school administrator. He co-founded eduki, a Berlin-based edtech startup and is currently managing director at Klett Group, a European education publishing company