In my whole life I have never done anything as special as being a teacher. It is hard work, often messy and always never ending. But there is just something so heart-rendering about these connections I get to forge with kids. They make me laugh joyously and at times, cry without restraint.
Today I had to send a bunch of students to the inside room for not completing their homework. Two of them came back afterwards and gave me very sincere apologies for not doing what they should have done. And I realized that those words came out of a combination of relationship and respect. When school works, its foundation is relationship and respect. It works because these two things do not flow out of a system dictated from the top down but rather something very special that grows from the bottom up. We teachers live for moments such as these as they validate all the other moments of the hard, the messy and the never ending.
Today I had to send a bunch of students to the inside room for not completing their homework. Two of them came back afterwards and gave me very sincere apologies for not doing what they should have done. And I realized that those words came out of a combination of relationship and respect. When school works, its foundation is relationship and respect. It works because these two things do not flow out of a system dictated from the top down but rather something very special that grows from the bottom up. We teachers live for moments such as these as they validate all the other moments of the hard, the messy and the never ending.
1 comment:
Although I'm not a teacher (yet) I think you described what a good teacher's experience is like perfectly. I can't wait for the day that I'll have these type of moments with my students like you just shared.
-Lisa
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