Jill Puchacz and The icing on the cake

So as some of you may know me on a personal level, you may know that I work with students who some may feel are a 'difficult' group.  I find them to be some of the most amazing people I have ever met.  Their perseverance and positive attitudes (most of the time), are contagious.  I love my job and find myself to be one of the 'lucky ones'. 

Some may say that just that in itself is a reward, which it is... but truthfully it gets better than that.  I am a pretty high energy and positive person as is, but what happened on Sunday just makes me so happy.  Let me tell you a little bit about how great my students are.

I will start with Friday.  Typically Fridays are one of the most trying days as its the end of the week, my students are usually a mix of excited/anxious for the next two days away from school.  My last period especially has a high amount of energy as they are my largest class and there have some pretty funny personalities in there as well.  As the period was drawing to a close I mentioned to them that I was running in the Shamrock Shuffle on Sunday morning before the citys Saint Patricks Day Parade.  They all thought it was especially funny when I told them that I would be wearing a tutu and some pretty awesome shamrock jewelry.  So I put the offer out there for them to come early to the parade and watch me run, promising them that they would not really be able to miss me as I would be looking particularly green. The response was a bunch of 'yeah rights' and 'good luck Ms. P', but not a single 'sure Ill be there'.  Even if I had heard that as a response, I probably would have assumed that there would be no follow through because, who actually wants to see their teacher when they aren't in school?

I went through my weekend and woke up Sunday morning and got on all my Irish gear, I was looking pretty fantastic to be fair! Met up with my friends and off to Elm Street we went.  As we were standing around waiting for the race to begin, I saw a familiar face scowering the crowd, and to my surprise it was a student of mine walking around with a couple of his friends.  I didn't think much of it but said 'Hello' as he walked past and when he realized it was me he get a huge smile but then tried to play it cool.  I was so happy to see one of my students but didn't read much more into it, as the race was about to begin. 

The airhorn sounded and we all took off on our two mile journey and there wasn't much going though my head past the fact that it was really windy and I would have been okay still snuggled up in my bed as I was freezing!  As the race continued and I drew closer to the finish line I began to pick up the pace, and out of the corner of my eye something grabbed my attention so I looked to my left, and sure enough there was my student waiting at the finish line cheering me on lounder than anyone there.  I waved at him and of course had a huge smile on my face as I was honored to have a student there cheering me on. After I crossed the finish line I wasn't able to find him which was a bit of a bummer and I am still looking forward to seeing him in school today to say Thank You.

The reward was not so much that I had someone cheering me on, but that a student took time out of his weekend to come and cheer on his goofball teacher at a race.  I don't think that he knew how much that meant to me, and honestly I don't know if I can put the right words together to express it either, but I can say that something like that makes all of the late nights and early mornings a little bit more worth it.