She writes: I am not a person who is comfortable writing about myself or my experiences. As a child I learned that my personal written words could be used against me. However, I have been following your blog and took a tremendous leap of faith and wrote about an experience I had. It has taken me a couple of days to gather the mental strength to take another leap and share this with you. You inspired me to put some things down into written words.
❤
When you have been an educator for a while, you will certainly face the inevitable ebbs and flows of emotion and energy. You will ask yourself, “Am I making a difference?”. At the start of all our meetings; teachers, teacher-leaders and administrators are asked “Why are we doing this?”, in context of working toward improving learning and student growth, and the answer is obviously “for the kids”. But the question we quietly ask ourselves in the moments of low energy, high frustration, lack of feeling effective, mounting time constraints and new initiatives is “Why am I doing this?” There is a subtle difference. We are questioning why we went into this profession, why we put so much of ourselves - physically, mentally, emotionally, financially something in which the rewards are often fleeting or not visualized until long after our students have moved onto another grade, another building, graduated.
Educators are charged with much more than teaching the basic content areas. We work hard at supporting the social, emotional, mental and physical needs of our students. We strive to teach the “whole child” while working to become partners with their families, and sometimes end up supporting their social, emotional, mental and physical needs, too. “Am I making a difference?” we ask ourselves after a difficult parent-teacher interaction, after a difficult conversation with a colleague or searching for one more intervention we can try with a struggling student. I’ve asked myself these very questions. I asked myself these very questions on my way into work today.
Today was not an atypical day. I had a long list of items on my to-do list that would certainly consume more time than I had in the day, a meeting to attend, phone calls to make, a presentation to finish, programs to plan and students to check up on. My day was moving as expected, until he came in.
Peter* was a regular in my travels. He was was always quiet and polite As the year progressed, he began to open up to a few of us about his feelings and frustrations. He is an incredibly gifted artist and he so wanted to do well in school, but learning was difficult for him. He wasn’t a student who had fallen through the cracks. Interventions had been put into place and then when those did not seem to work, we tried others. We are still trying. His mother was very involved with his education and is a true partner with us. The student was not giving up on his education and neither were we. Despite everything, he still struggled. Today he was having a day in which he needed to share his feelings. He spoke quietly with one of my colleagues; sharing his emotions.
As he left our classroom, he gave some of them a hug, something a bit out of character for him. As I pondered this action, another administrator came into my classroom to discuss two other students. As the conversation wrapped up about the other students, I raised the concern I had about the hugs to the administrator. I saw this once before in college...someone doing something that could be construed as saying goodbye...and they were. I brought my colleagues into the conversation and we discussed Peter and my concern. One mentioned that he was very disappointed that for the last couple of weeks he could not find an item of special importance to him. He was unable to replace it financially. As my colleague was relaying this story, the other administrator took out her phone and began to look up the item on Amazon. In a moment, we were all pulling out our wallets and chipping in to get this student a replacement. But it was more than that. It was so much more than that. We were pulling together to show this child how much we cared, how much he meant to us, how much his gift would mean to the world, how he had value.
Five minutes later we had Peter back in our classroom and told him that we had just ordered the special item. Tears burst forth, he was overcome with emotion and gratitude. He tried to speak, but when he couldn’t, we all ended up in a group hug. We told him how we had listened to him and listened to what mattered to him. We wanted him to know that we cared about him, we were willing to be there and listen to him, and we wanted to support him. He spent more time opening up about his feelings. This time when he left us, he gave hugs all around and left with a smile on his face.
Did I make a difference today? Absolutely.
*Not his real name
Educators are charged with much more than teaching the basic content areas. We work hard at supporting the social, emotional, mental and physical needs of our students. We strive to teach the “whole child” while working to become partners with their families, and sometimes end up supporting their social, emotional, mental and physical needs, too. “Am I making a difference?” we ask ourselves after a difficult parent-teacher interaction, after a difficult conversation with a colleague or searching for one more intervention we can try with a struggling student. I’ve asked myself these very questions. I asked myself these very questions on my way into work today.
Today was not an atypical day. I had a long list of items on my to-do list that would certainly consume more time than I had in the day, a meeting to attend, phone calls to make, a presentation to finish, programs to plan and students to check up on. My day was moving as expected, until he came in.
Peter* was a regular in my travels. He was was always quiet and polite As the year progressed, he began to open up to a few of us about his feelings and frustrations. He is an incredibly gifted artist and he so wanted to do well in school, but learning was difficult for him. He wasn’t a student who had fallen through the cracks. Interventions had been put into place and then when those did not seem to work, we tried others. We are still trying. His mother was very involved with his education and is a true partner with us. The student was not giving up on his education and neither were we. Despite everything, he still struggled. Today he was having a day in which he needed to share his feelings. He spoke quietly with one of my colleagues; sharing his emotions.
As he left our classroom, he gave some of them a hug, something a bit out of character for him. As I pondered this action, another administrator came into my classroom to discuss two other students. As the conversation wrapped up about the other students, I raised the concern I had about the hugs to the administrator. I saw this once before in college...someone doing something that could be construed as saying goodbye...and they were. I brought my colleagues into the conversation and we discussed Peter and my concern. One mentioned that he was very disappointed that for the last couple of weeks he could not find an item of special importance to him. He was unable to replace it financially. As my colleague was relaying this story, the other administrator took out her phone and began to look up the item on Amazon. In a moment, we were all pulling out our wallets and chipping in to get this student a replacement. But it was more than that. It was so much more than that. We were pulling together to show this child how much we cared, how much he meant to us, how much his gift would mean to the world, how he had value.
Five minutes later we had Peter back in our classroom and told him that we had just ordered the special item. Tears burst forth, he was overcome with emotion and gratitude. He tried to speak, but when he couldn’t, we all ended up in a group hug. We told him how we had listened to him and listened to what mattered to him. We wanted him to know that we cared about him, we were willing to be there and listen to him, and we wanted to support him. He spent more time opening up about his feelings. This time when he left us, he gave hugs all around and left with a smile on his face.
Did I make a difference today? Absolutely.
*Not his real name
"Vulnerability is not weakness.
It's our greatest measure of courage."
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