Work

Most of you know that I’m a junior high teacher. There were a lot of reasons that I decided to go into this profession. First, if I had to work (which is the case), I’d be able to have the time off with my kids. Second, I wanted to help make a difference. Like that song by Lady Antebellum “I was here” – you should totally check it out because it’s awesome. Well, recently I’ve had a couple of really great teaching moments. At Open House, I had a parent talk to me and tell me that her son (who’s got like the highest grade in my honors geometry class) has always been good at math but this is the first year that he’s liked math – it’s his favorite subject! I also work with the students who are below grade level in math and struggle with basic skills. Last week we had our post test on the topic we were covering and this girl who’s come to the class at least 3 times this year and normally still struggles (ya, she’s really low). She got a 100% and you could just see the joy in her face. I mean she didn’t say anything because she’s one of those girls who has a reputation to maintain and doing well in school is not part of it. But she was super excited. Then, I’ve been tutoring a student at a different junior high that was pulling Ds and Cs in math, which was really unusual for him. I’ve been working with him since October and recently he was part of an Academic Pentathlon team that went to a competition for our entire district. His team won 2 1st place medals overall and he himself won 2nd place for History and Science, 5th place for Language Arts, and……..3rd place in Math. That’s 3rd place out of every individual in the tournament in the entire district for the junior high level. Now, I’m not telling you this to toot my own horn. What a lot of people don’t know is that as teachers, we feel defeated much of the time, especially when you work in an area with the population of students that I do. We get down on ourselves for the poor test scores, that there are students that no matter how many times and different ways you teach something they will just not get it. We deal with disrespectful kids that we’re not allowed to hit. =) Our administration doesn’t back us up and more often than not, tells us we’re doing our job wrong when our test scores don’t improve (never mind that the student has no parental support or never does his homework or puts in an ounce of effort). 95% of the time we watch the days go by feeling as though we didn’t accomplish anything and struggle with the thought that maybe we could have done more. But these last few weeks, that 5%, is part of the reason I still believe that I have the best job in the world and gives me hope that I am making at least a little difference in this world.