Reflective Teacher: Day 4

When I sat down at my computer to write this blog, dead tired and fighting a nasty cold, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed. It's been a LONG day - 15 hours and counting. A full teaching day, followed by several hours of Back to School Night. Followed by putting on my Mommy hat and attending ANOTHER Back to School Night. That's right, folks...two Back to School Nights in one evening. Suffice it to say I'm ready to throw in the towel for the evening. The last thing I wanted to do was blog about education; won't that keep for another day? And then I looked at the prompt: What do I love the most about teaching?

And just like that I'm invigorated. What do I love about teaching? Just about everything. I teach History and AVID at a low-income, urban high school. My students need me. I feed them, teach them, guide them, love them. I counsel them, scold them, encourage them, and cry with them. Large numbers of my students stay in contact even after they graduate. I make a difference in their lives. Knowing that, and hearing that from them, is what I love most about teaching.

To put it another way, what I do makes these 15 hour days worthwhile. Those days matter, and because I do what I do, students' lives are changed. Talk about impacting the future...is there anything more worthy in this world?