I have been thinking lately about how it is that it's very hard to recruit people to be teachers, scientists, and especially science teachers. When I talked to one of the most intelligent kids I taught some years after he graduated from college he explained that there was no reason to go into a technical field, there was no money in it. What did he do? Traded derivatives on Wall Street.

Yesterday I got a friend request from a student I taught in my first job (from 1987-1990). Here's what he wrote on my wall:

why shouldn't i seek you out? i graduated with a computer science degree. your classes at "perk" were awesome. to this day i will never forget you retrieving info from a hard drive. i wanted to know that stuff!!! unfortunately, i was a u.s. history major in college - then i switched to computers. i went on to graphics and finally got to edit corporate videos on an avid for a fortune 500 company. thank you for waking my mind up to that field! take care -

So it seems that something I did helped someone turn out OK. I'm not quite sure how these two stories are connected, besides they're both people that I taught. I guess it's good to know that when I was flying blind as a new teacher establishing a computer program where none had existed (something that I'm not sure I'd do again) I did some stuff right. I'm glad that Chris learned enough about computers to make it a career, I'm still worried, though, how our country is going to again convince people like Nimrod that contributing to knowledge and making stuff is a better career choice than manipulating numbers to "make" money and destroy our economy.