semiotic_pirate | I need your opinions!

Please read the following short essay and let me know what you think of it. I have to write two short essays (limit of 4150 characters each) for my Alternate Route to Certification (for teaching) application. The first answers the question "Why do you want to become a teacher at this point in your life?" The second is "What strengths and skills will you bring to teaching?" and boy am I having trouble with this one as it is one of my weaknesses in not being able to talk about my strengths and skills.

What I am asking is for you to read the short essay that I wrote in answer of the first question. Here goes:

Over time, I came to realize that what I love to do most is to teach people. I find the giving of information, to teach someone something and see the look on his or her face as they begin to understand, to be very satisfying. Having taught the workings of complex machinery to new employees, having taught my sister and mother the basics of algebra and geometry, and having taught my youngest sibling how to tie his shoes, it all comes back to that same feeling of doing something important and doing it well. Seeing people learn to believe in themselves because I helped them achieve what they felt was beyond their grasp is an amazing thing.

I want to become a teacher at this point in my life because it is the right thing for me to do. I look at teaching as a vocation, as a way to pay back all those teachers who made a difference in my life when it mattered the most. The mission of a teacher is to increase the world's capacity for growth by enabling each student to fully maximize his or her talents, imagination, analytical skills and character. That is a mission I can believe in and work at continually.

I was taught to love learning and I want to pass on that love of learning by becoming like the teachers I admired the most. To be an educator who brings an enthusiasm to the subject, an enthusiasm that transfers itself to the student because it is genuine. This is what I know I am capable of doing and what I plan to accomplish.

Mathematics is an amazing subject to me. I have found that mathematics is something I am passionate about and it is this passion that I want to pass on to students. To be able to see the beauty in the mechanisms of an equation, to enjoy the intricacies of working through a complex problem, and to understand the everyday use that mathematics plays in the world are things that I also want to pass on to students.

I have thought about the best way in which I can make a difference in society, using skills and abilities that I have, and have found that I believe education is the most productive way of ensuring a better society. I know that teaching is an extraordinarily complex and challenging task, I relish knowing this. I also know that I am equal to the challenge.

Thank you in advance for taking the time to go over it and making comments. Hopefully I can get through the next question as well.