MY GIFT TO MY STUDENTS

 
 
 

My first day of trackout has given me time to reflect on my year of teaching.  I only have 9 weeks left with my current students before they move on to 8th grade.  Panic has set in as I realize that I need more time.  5 days a week, I try to meet the educational and emotional needs of approximately 125 adolescents.  The state provides me with lessons, themes, and ideas that I can use in my classroom.  I work with three other teachers on my team. We daily discuss the myriad of challenges that we face.  The horrible truth is that most days I feel like a failure.  Have I accomplished anything real or life changing?

Our science teacher, Ms. Boone, recently studied genetics.  The students made faces out of construction paper that captured their unique physical traits.  Every morning, I walk by the wall of over 100 faces and always smile.  My students are not robots that simply memorize facts and figures.  I cannot magically open up their minds and dump in all the knowledge I feel they might need in the future. Each child is magically unique and no ONE teacher can possibly reach them all. However, this powerful truth has changed my entire way of teaching and parenting. 

The gift that I give my students is that I accept them where they are in their journey.  Many of them are talented writers, eloquent poets, articulate speakers, and dedicated scholars.  I chuckle as I think of those young girls and boys that are just quite simply a mess.  Parents come to conferences and throw their hands up in the air unable to think of ways to motivate their children to put forth more effort.  I could spend the next 10 years with some of my students and never reach them.  I am thankful that each of us has a lifetime to interact with individuals that will inspire and teach us.  And so as I walk past those paper faces, I remind myself to look up from the books and the papers and see the real faces in front of me.  I humbly thank God for the way He might use me in the lives of my 7th graders.  As a parent, I pray that there is at least one teacher that looks into the faces of my own children and perhaps changes them forever.