I don’t diary often. I prefer to vent my frustrations on the issues of the day in comments here on good old DK. I have been a member here since 2005 and over that time I have never really written much about myself. Today, however I feel like sharing something with the place that has come to mean a great deal to me over the past 15 years. This orange place has served as a community of sorts for me for a long time and and has helped me process a great deal. This is a place where I have gone to share anger, grief, joy ,hope, and lately utter loathing.
Today marks my final day as a special education classroom teacher. After 37 years my retirement begins. Covid19 changed things up the last few months but I wrote this as I thought about my life spent in so many different classrooms.
I am a teacher.
I set goals
I set limits.
I encourage.
I discourage.
I organize endlessly.
I work in chaos.
I am a teacher.
I speak.
I listen.
I clarify and I confuse.
I understand and I am bewildered
I nurture hopes and dreams.
I speak hard truths.
I am a teacher.
I relish the well written report that captures the essence of a student and lays out a direction of where that student and I can go together.
I dread sitting down at a blank screen to write another one.
I handle rainy days, birthdays, holiday party days, minimum days, field trip days and loooong days.
I handle school dances, parent nights, fire drills, earthquake drills, and I go to meetings...and go to meetings...and go to meetings...
I am a teacher.
I hold hands.
I also hold iphones, ear buds, pencils, pens, crayons, candy wrappers and whatever the heck that thing is that Johnny took out of his pocket this morning.
I hold the smiles of students and families in my heart.
I hold the precious moments of connection....Those moments when a student and I have somehow managed to bridge that distance between us and we truly communicate and understand each other on an equal level ….I hold those moments in my soul because those are the moments that define what being a teacher can be at its best.
It is one of the most essential but least explainable professions I can imagine.
For 37 years I have been able to say with PROFOUND gratitude and with a heartfelt sense of FIERCE pride:
I am a teacher-And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.