I love being a teacher and I love the students I work with. Yesterday, I had stayed a bit late catching up on some paperwork and while I was leaving, the tennis team was practicing and from the court I heard "Hey Miss P! Have a great night!". The kicker is that the student isn't even in any of my classes or on my robotics team. She is interested in being in my program for next year but I haven't really worked with her at all.
Recently, there were two new students that moved to my school from another school in the district and there has been some tough transitions for them as being new in a high school is tough. One of the first days, one of the students came into my classroom and sat down and told me that she was not going to do anything that I asked her to do. She would throw fits every time I would tell her that either she did the work or she gets a zero for the day AND I call home to Mom. Being consistent can be hard because there are some days you just want to say... "Fine! Have it your way! UGH", but being consistent is the only way to make things work as a teacher. Now, every time I am out for a conference or have a meeting and am not in school for whatever reason, I get an e-mail from her telling me that she misses me and she wishes I was back. This melts my heart a bit as you can imagine and I always try to make sure I celebrate the 'small stuff' because that is what teaching is all about. Don't get me wrong, this does NOT happen all the time and, most students enjoy the 'vacation' of having me be out of school every once in a while for a conference, but it makes me so happy to know that my class is important to some of my students.
There are moments that make me want to pull my hair out, but those are far less frequent than the moments that make me exhale pure happiness when I realize how lucky I am to be doing what I love so very much. I wonder how I got so lucky to be where I am. I know that I have worked really hard, but so many people who have also worked hard are not nearly as happy as I am with my career choice. What this all made me realize is that, I really love being Miss P.
