Why I Still Teach (Even If the System Is Broken)

You can fix a leaking boat, but only if you’re still in it.

Every summer, I ask myself the same question: why do I still teach?

The system is cracked. Admissions have lost their spine. AI policies are a joke, if they exist at all. Discipline? Gone. Phones out, calls mid-lecture, snacks in the front row, deadlines treated like loose suggestions. Management tiptoes. Faculty compromise. Schools can’t afford standards, so they quietly discard them. “You pay, you pass” isn’t just a whisper anymore, it’s the business model.

And yet. I teach.

Not because it’s working, but because it still matters. I teach for the sparks. The quiet ones. The bored ones. The ones on the fence, waiting for someone, anyone, to believe they’re capable of more. I teach for that moment when a student who barely spoke all semester says, “Your class made me think differently.” It’s rare. It’s invisible. And it’s everything.

I walk the beaches of Finistère and wonder if I’m wasting my time. But I always come back. Because there’s grace in this mess. Because teaching isn’t my job, it’s my pulse. If I won the national lottery, I’d still show up in September. Crooked tie. Ink-stained notes. Ready to fight the tide with a whiteboard.

The house may be crumbling. But in one corner of the amphi, a light flickers on.

And I still believe in the light.