Teaching

The longer I stay out of teaching to stay home with my boys, the less I feel the pull to go back .  Teaching is such hard work.  It sucks all of your energy, and I feel like I have to pour my heart completely into my class in order to do a good job.  My greatest  efforts and triumphs were often met are met with disinterest, and occasionallyeven hostility from parents.

When I was teaching in the classroom, there were these little times of great joy that would be there.  It might be  the joy of seeing the kids take tiny positive steps toward learning.  Or a step toward becoming confident in themselves or steps to seeing each other with compassion.  These moments more than made up for any drawbacks of the profession.

Unfortunately those little experiences are hard to grasp onto when you are away from the classroom.  It is hard to imagine the intensity of power that those moments hold when you are not feeling them.

On Tuesday I got a little reminder of it.

I was in Owen’s classroom reading with a small group of three boys.  They struggled with some of the words in the story, but were trucking along.  One boy, who was having a little harder time than the other two, looked at the page that he knew he was about to read aloud on his own.  He looked at the page, and then turned back to the page that we had just been on and said,  “There are a LOT of words on that page.  I don’t think I can read that page because I don’t really do that good with so many words.”  He smashed his lips together and moved them to the side of his face.   I said, “Just read one word at a time, and if you need help, I will help you.  And - if you get help, that will be great  because then you will have learned to read a new word – and school is just the right place for that, right?”  He looked at me skeptically but then gave me a little smile and began to read.  He was able to read all of the words.  I said excitedly, “Wow, you read all 4 lines on that page.  1, 2, 3, 4, …..15, 16 words!”  The boy’s face was all smiles and his eyes went back and forth between the text, me, and the other boys in the group (who were also smiling).

It was one of those moments.  Just a few minutes out of the day, but one where I know something very positive happened.  That boy may not remember the moment later, but I know he felt proud and confident and I loved being a part of that. 

I have not missed being a teacher like that for a long time!