CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL
I'm Glad It's You and Not Me
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teacher Tales
BY: Jean Lamar
Teachers who inspire realize there will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how we use them.
~Author Unknown
It was 2:00 AM. The moon gleamed ever so slightly through a crack in the curtains, just enough for me to glance over at my husband, sleeping like a newborn, snoring for the entire world to hear. If only I could rest so peacefully.
But I couldn't, of course. It was the beginning of another school year, and waking up hours before the alarm invariably accompanies a new school start -- even after almost twenty years. My mind raced with thoughts of all the tasks I had done -- "finding" filing cabinets, shelves, tables, decorating my room, planning new course syllabi, buying supplies (and praying that I would have money left to pay my bills) -- and all the things I hadn't. I was starting a new curriculum, new grade-levels at a new school, and this year, I had agreed to teach all struggling students in need of critical intervention... where would I go from here? I knew what lay ahead -- arduous work hours overlaid with guilt, consumed with essays that needed feedback, lesson plans desirous of best practice strategies, and ideas to try to reach even the most reluctant learner. No wonder people always acknowledge my teaching career with, "I'm glad it's you and not me." The knot in my stomach continued to tighten.
Suddenly, my already muddled mind transported me to another time and place... to my first few years of teaching.
"Peter Potter," I called from my roll, trying to stifle my laughter. "Laughlin McLaughlin?" Surely these were not real names.
"Emotionally handicapped... keep them separated from the other kids... in this portable," the Assistant Principal commanded. This was my first teaching assignment, in a field outside my scope of training (mine was English Education), obviously long before it was considered inappropriate to label kids. Even the students had names for each other. "Stank" was the one I sadly recalled, even after all this time.
And then... "the incident" -- when I looked down to see an exposed body part that I did not -- in any way, shape, or form -- desire to see! I felt myself hyperventilating at the mere thought....
Surely this year could never be as daunting as those first few.
Later that day, I looked across my "new" classroom, into the face of Jason, whose cumulative folder I had just read. At eleven, his mother and brother were killed in an automobile accident, leaving him with physical, academic, and certainly emotional scars. I looked at another student, Robert, standing at the door; my Assistant Principal asked if I would take him, even though he was an eleventh grader in my tenth grade class. "He can't read; he'll drop out unless you can do something with him." Of course I said yes; what else could I do?
These stories merged into others across the years -- Stephanie, who used writing as a catharsis to cope with the loss of her precious cancer-stricken mother; Michael, who so powerfully connected with the Greasers in The Outsiders because he, too, had been abandoned by his family; Jason, whose crack-addict mother was murdered in an inner-city alley; Brian, who ran away from his foster home, desperately in search of a "real" home and perhaps more importantly, in search of himself; Joey and Dave, whose hands literally shook with fear when trying to "perform" for a test. Stories of tears and sadness, yet of hope that I could somehow make a difference in spite of such brokenness.
But then there were -- and are -- stories of success -- of Dustin, in graduate school for Electrical and Computer Engineering; of Noah, in seminary, preparing to serve God in the ministry; of Michael -- the same Michael abandoned by his mother -- now a teacher in an inner city school; of Willie, once a struggling reader, who went on to become the first generation college graduate in his African-American family. I thought of Emily and Andi, of Amber and Kayla and Mallory, whose love and enthusiasm for books and characters still warm my thoughts. I thought of creative lessons, Shakespeare Festivals, school plays, and after-school tutoring sessions that have filled my life day after day, year after year. I thought of the thousands of students whose lives have touched mine far more than I could have ever have touched theirs.
I broke from my reverie, a smile radiating across my face. Sadness, tears, challenges, fears -- yes, teaching is filled with all of these -- yet, it is undeniably also filled with laughter and smiles, hope, dreams, and rewards beyond measure.
"I'm glad it's you and not me." Those words reverberated in my mind once again. Yeah, so am I, I thought... so am I.
I'm Glad It's You and Not Me
Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teacher Tales
BY: Jean Lamar
Teachers who inspire realize there will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how we use them.
~Author Unknown
It was 2:00 AM. The moon gleamed ever so slightly through a crack in the curtains, just enough for me to glance over at my husband, sleeping like a newborn, snoring for the entire world to hear. If only I could rest so peacefully.
But I couldn't, of course. It was the beginning of another school year, and waking up hours before the alarm invariably accompanies a new school start -- even after almost twenty years. My mind raced with thoughts of all the tasks I had done -- "finding" filing cabinets, shelves, tables, decorating my room, planning new course syllabi, buying supplies (and praying that I would have money left to pay my bills) -- and all the things I hadn't. I was starting a new curriculum, new grade-levels at a new school, and this year, I had agreed to teach all struggling students in need of critical intervention... where would I go from here? I knew what lay ahead -- arduous work hours overlaid with guilt, consumed with essays that needed feedback, lesson plans desirous of best practice strategies, and ideas to try to reach even the most reluctant learner. No wonder people always acknowledge my teaching career with, "I'm glad it's you and not me." The knot in my stomach continued to tighten.
Suddenly, my already muddled mind transported me to another time and place... to my first few years of teaching.
"Peter Potter," I called from my roll, trying to stifle my laughter. "Laughlin McLaughlin?" Surely these were not real names.
"Emotionally handicapped... keep them separated from the other kids... in this portable," the Assistant Principal commanded. This was my first teaching assignment, in a field outside my scope of training (mine was English Education), obviously long before it was considered inappropriate to label kids. Even the students had names for each other. "Stank" was the one I sadly recalled, even after all this time.
And then... "the incident" -- when I looked down to see an exposed body part that I did not -- in any way, shape, or form -- desire to see! I felt myself hyperventilating at the mere thought....
Surely this year could never be as daunting as those first few.
Later that day, I looked across my "new" classroom, into the face of Jason, whose cumulative folder I had just read. At eleven, his mother and brother were killed in an automobile accident, leaving him with physical, academic, and certainly emotional scars. I looked at another student, Robert, standing at the door; my Assistant Principal asked if I would take him, even though he was an eleventh grader in my tenth grade class. "He can't read; he'll drop out unless you can do something with him." Of course I said yes; what else could I do?
These stories merged into others across the years -- Stephanie, who used writing as a catharsis to cope with the loss of her precious cancer-stricken mother; Michael, who so powerfully connected with the Greasers in The Outsiders because he, too, had been abandoned by his family; Jason, whose crack-addict mother was murdered in an inner-city alley; Brian, who ran away from his foster home, desperately in search of a "real" home and perhaps more importantly, in search of himself; Joey and Dave, whose hands literally shook with fear when trying to "perform" for a test. Stories of tears and sadness, yet of hope that I could somehow make a difference in spite of such brokenness.
But then there were -- and are -- stories of success -- of Dustin, in graduate school for Electrical and Computer Engineering; of Noah, in seminary, preparing to serve God in the ministry; of Michael -- the same Michael abandoned by his mother -- now a teacher in an inner city school; of Willie, once a struggling reader, who went on to become the first generation college graduate in his African-American family. I thought of Emily and Andi, of Amber and Kayla and Mallory, whose love and enthusiasm for books and characters still warm my thoughts. I thought of creative lessons, Shakespeare Festivals, school plays, and after-school tutoring sessions that have filled my life day after day, year after year. I thought of the thousands of students whose lives have touched mine far more than I could have ever have touched theirs.
I broke from my reverie, a smile radiating across my face. Sadness, tears, challenges, fears -- yes, teaching is filled with all of these -- yet, it is undeniably also filled with laughter and smiles, hope, dreams, and rewards beyond measure.
"I'm glad it's you and not me." Those words reverberated in my mind once again. Yeah, so am I, I thought... so am I.
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