Teaching

This year, I became a teacher. No, it is not my first year teaching, it is my third. But this is the first year I've been able to embrace it because this is the first year I've ENJOYED it. It helps that I have not been so crippled by fear and lack of identity that I can actually see beyond my own nose. It also helps that I have really good kids this year.

But finally, FINALLY, I feel like I know what I'm doing, or at least enough to go to work everyday with my head held high and not flinch when someone calls me an expert. Because the training they gave me did nothing to make me an expert. Nothing can quite prepare you for the great responsibility and joy it is to have young minds and hearts to shape and change.

Teaching is different every day. Each day, a child walks into your classroom having had experiences over the brief amount of time since you last saw them that you know nothing about. Some have lost relatives, others had fights with friends. Others just disappeared and you later hear they moved in with a relative you didn't even know they had. (I think I had one student for all of a week before he moved in with his grandparents.) Still others just had the best night of their lives. And all of them are sitting in a desk patiently waiting for you to impart unto them knowledge... yeah right! They're all standing around talking and laughing or crying and complaining or a combination of all of these and somehow your voice has to become louder than these fights or joys or simple hunger to drive a small bit of information into their brains.

But actually, I find the information driving to be less important that the character developing. I think teaching children to be honest and good-hearted people is much more important that teaching them how to write a sentence or what an adverb is. Still, it is telling them what adverbs and such are that allows me to keep my job, which is what allows me to teach them character and also build them up toward brighter futures. (Which will require both honesty and the ability to write a sentence, no matter how much they tell you otherwise!) See, I didn't say sentence writing was UNimportant, just less so. ;)

But it's not all heavy responsibility and attempting to bypass teenage drama. Some of my students are the most hilarious people. Others are poets. Still others are super helpful. Some just want to be noticed, and others just want to be left alone. Each of them is unique, a treasure hidden deep inside a small person who doesn't know how to let it out or if it's even safe to do so.

I have good kids, and they are mine, but really they are Yahweh's and entrusted to me for but a short time. They come with backgrounds that I couldn't even begin to imagine and, for the most part, worldviews that I just want to shake them out of. But beyond all that, deep inside, is the treasure that Yahweh placed there waiting to be discovered. Though I can see glimpses, my prayer for them is that one day they will be able to see it for themselves in it's entirety. That they will recognize their own value.