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The beginning of the academic year is an interesting reflective time for returning teachers.

While the end of each school year is packed with all of the ceremonious and nostalgic activities that collage together the still-fresh memories of the just-ended semesters, it is usually too busy a time to step back and fully reflect.

The week before a new semester, by contrast, is a time for teachers to look back comprehensively over all of the successes and failures of the cumulative years, and to start formulating the next plan of attack.

But, with a teacher turnover rate of 56 percent every five years, the beginning of a new year is also a reminder for returning educators: you have once again made the cut.

Put another way, returning teachers have won a battle in the war of attrition that drags so heavily on our profession, our schools, and our students.

I like talking to new teachers and discovering how they came to our profession. I like their individual stories, and I feel like I am searching for a pattern that might connect those who prove to be both successful and committed over time.

There are retirees for whom teaching is a second profession. There are young people who were so inspired by their own teachers that they felt it was a calling to follow their path. There are Teach for America corps members who have, for the first time, delved into issues of socioeconomic and educational inequality after rallying in the streets on these issues, even if they never personally experienced those things. And there are those who have stumbled from one profession to another, finally settling on teaching for a variety of reasons.

Although I was technically brought into teaching by Teach for America, my life mostly closely resembles that last category.

Just three months before I stood at the head of a classroom for the first time, teaching wasn’t even on my radar.

In my twenties, I drifted aimlessly through life. I wasn’t apathetic. I was just so drawn to my passions for so many different things that I couldn’t commit to any one thing at the expense of another. (It left me feeling paralyzed.)

When I was in the Army, I wholly dedicated myself to volunteering for every extra duty or detail that came my way: Airborne school, boxing, and even Special Forces selection.

My first year out of the Army, I got a job in a rail yard working on radios. It paid more than I earn as a teacher with a masters degree, but there were whole days when I barely interacted with people.

Then I packed my hatchback and drove across the country, to Los Angeles, thinking I’d try my hand at my childhood dream of working in the film industry. But after three years of working in retail and restaurants in LA, I still couldn’t find my way onto a movie set.

Even worse, I still hadn’t even finished my undergrad degree. I hadn’t done well in high school, but my military service, admissions essay, and transfer grades got me into the University of California at Berkeley. I majored in the only thing that I had really stuck with since childhood, art. Then, after I set my sites on law school — I even sent out my first round of applications — something totally unexpected happened.

I was sitting in a coffee shop writing a policy paper for my Wealth and Poverty class when I heard a guy at the next table pitching the Teach For America program to a prospective applicant. (I remembered an epiphany that I had one day in the Army that I might end up as a teacher some day.) I asked if I could join them at the table. Two days later, I made the last application deadline of the year, and ten weeks after that, I was on a plane headed to Hawaii to be a high school English teacher.

I was so nervous during my first week on the job that my voice wouldn’t stop shaking. But my students were intensely interested in my experiences in the Army and in Los Angeles, and the personal connections we formed put me at ease.

I found that the maturity, leadership skills, and perspective that I’d gained from my prior travels and experiences gave me a broader understanding of things, and that I had an ability to relate to the students who struggled just as much as the ones who succeeded on the first try.

Entering my sixth year in the classroom, I feel that I can only now call myself a “highly-qualified” teacher — a title that should be reserved to distinguish those who have earned it, rather than every teacher who passes a standardized test.

I know that what keeps me in the classroom is the combination of a commitment to an ideal and, up until now, a relative disregard for financial incentive. But we can’t staff schools with teachers who are truly “highly qualified” on the hope that we can find enough educational ideologues to soldier on.

The most valuable investment that we can make in our education system is in our teachers — not a third-party curriculum company, not a fancy new automated grading software, and not an army of education consultants. I wish that the governor would understand that.

For those new teachers who have found this profession, I salute their journey and I hope that they find the personal purpose and inspiration that will convince them to stay and fight to make it better.

And for those teachers who are returning this year, I look forward to another year of sweating it out in the trenches, alongside you, for the sake of our students. And for Hawaii.