Why am I here?!

Panic-y conversation with self in the recent past: I’m pretty sure I’m a fraud. Clearly, I should have gone into Sales, because I’m pretty sure I tricked someone into giving me this job. I can’t do this. Maybe I can still get out of my contract?

I think at one point or another we have all had this small crisis only minutes before our most challenging class…or maybe just this past week as we prepare to head back for fall classes. Oh my gracious, we cry, how on earth did I become a teacher? Why am I here?!

Some of us have always been zealous about the wee ones; you know, the cute little fellows who are still learning proper syntax. Others of us have such a passion for English literature that the thought of not sharing our deepest insights into Shakespeare on a daily basis makes our hearts ache. But I think there is an odd bunch of us out there who may not even know why or how we got into education, even though we feel God has called us to the positions we are in. So what keeps us here?

The last time I found my face on the keyboard (because, yes, I do find a crisscross imprint on my forehead from time to time), I was reminded of an experience that I had two weeks into my student teaching semester. I remember sitting back in my makeshift teacher’s desk at the end of the day beaming. I had that huge grin plastered across my face that can only gurgle up from your heart when your heart can express sheer joy in no other way. I was so proud of that faux teacher’s desk and my paper sorting trays and my access to an electronic grading book. But my heart was really bursting because I adored those rambunctious thirteen year-olds that I had known for a mere eight days. I was in love.

As I rack my brain to recall the beauty of the 2011-12 school year, these are the first things that come to mind:

- Planning. There must be a problem with my brain, because I love the mental acrobatics that go into planning a unit. Did we review this information more than once in class? Were they able to practice it at least once without a grade, once for homework, and once for a quiz before the final assessment? The puzzle of fitting everything into time blocks and calendars can drive me bonkers when I’m tired, but I love a great challenge, especially when I get to see its fruit in my students.

- Teenage humor. Yup, I said it. Not the crude stuff they say to each other when they think I’m not listening, but the random thoughts that tumble out of their mouths in the middle of class or the seemingly ingenious connections they make in their papers that are really funny. I also adore a quality spelling error or word mix-up, which, for example, means that some of my students went “to go sin” versus “to go fishing.” Frankly, my friends are just not as funny as my students.

- Great questions. Sometimes I am so caught up in a narrow tunnel of “this is where we are headed” that I forget to live in wonder. While my focus is lost in assisting students in the interpretation of “Let them eat cake!” my students are busy wondering if these cakes had icing and if so, what kind, and is it possible to make them next class period.

- Their tender concern. Last year I went home sick and received love letters, in French, from some of my students. Is your heart melting? Because mine sure was. I was sick for three weeks this summer and didn’t even get a card from my own mother!

So I've decided that I’m going to take this starter list and post it by my desk. Why? Because when we are bogged down with the paperwork, the details, the deadlines, and the feelings of failure, we need to be reminded of why we are teachers, alone in our classrooms, indenting keyboard patterns on our foreheads. Without that passion, that heart, and that reason for teaching, we become zombies with red pens and dry erase board markers. 

Do you remember falling in love with teaching?

Bisous,

Mme VD