Why do we teach?

We read today what Buddha did after enlightenment.
After taking a break, he started thinking if he could teach what he had learned.
The question was, who would be able to understand his teachings.
He first thought about his previous teachers, but they had died, so he decided to go back to his friends, the ascetics with whom he mediated in the forests. He met the five as ascetics in current-day Sarnath.

The little one where quite restless today, so we read this story from the textbook. When I asked them about the meaning of Dhamma (mentioned in the book) they couldn't remember, although we had just done the bowing to 3 jewels. I will have to spend more time on this.

The older ones said that since we had read and talked a lot last week we should meditate longer.
I briefly went over the story, instead of reading it. I mentioned that the reason the Buddha went around teaching was that he thought that he had learned would be useful to others. It was his ways of sharing. I explained that it was the same reason I had. This has become so much more clear to me in the last few weeks.
When I teach at Uni its always about skills, even when I get out of the 'technical' curricula is only to help them be better communicators or better team players... In some sense more skills.

Teaching Buddhism/meditation actually makes me feel good about myself.

For example, after the 20min sitting one of the kids who had been more restless during the session said that more thoughts came to his mind when he was sitting than otherwise. Other kids immediately said that they felt calmer, and it was just because he did not try hard enough.
He said that he had been thinking about computers, so I said how that happened to me all the time, even worst when I went into retreat, when there is nothing else to do.
When he explained what happened to him, I felt closer. I also felt that explaining why that happened , and giving him some tools to overcome that, would be a 'skill' that would benefit the rest of his life. Hopefully he would do much better than me!