With each school year comes challenges that leave me
questioning my purpose: "Are my students learning?" "Am I a good
teacher?" "Is it time to move on in my own personal quests?"
"Am I ready for the helicopter parents and the bull dozer parents?"
"Can I keep up with this spiraling technology mandate and the constantly
changing school board initiatives?" It can be a mentally and physically
exhaustive job where the rewards are small. As the students move on, your only
measure of success comes from tests created by a company that measures their
own success by the number of your students' failures. (ie: If too many of your
students actually understand the middle school grade level questions, it has
nothing to do with your ability to teach, it means the test must have been too
easy! So the company then changes it to be a test of endurance with 12 year
olds either giving up or sitting there for four to five hours.) However, just
when I decide that I can't take much more bureaucracy and
"parentacracy ;-)," and decide it's time to go, God hears me and
sends a little angel with a direct message.
I found this in my inbox today :-) ...
"Hi Mrs. Smith! You probably don't remember me but I
was one of your students 3 years ago! Today I was working on my AP Lang summer
assignment where we had to use and define rhetorical devices...it made me think
of you because I already learned all of these in your class. I just wanted to
let you know because it meant a lot to me to have a teacher who really cared if
I understood the material. Also, R----- ------ was in that class...we are still
friends and we always reminisce on how great your class was. Thank you, so
much."
