I am literally sitting on my classroom floor surrounded by empty desks and lingering dreams on the walls. Today was the first day I felt defeated. Not only defeated by my students, but personally and emotionally as well. These past few weeks I have been fighting harder than a retired boxer trying to regain the belt from a younger prospect. I looked at my students’ faces and lack of interest in their success and saw their dreams wither into the morning fog. No. My one class will not break the rest of their lives, but I wanted to change their lives, as ignorant and naïve as that was for me to think. I’m not sure if they were aware that on the first day when we all made our dream boards I had a dream myself. Not as grand as Martin Luther King Jr., but grand in it’s own way.
I had a dream that I would be able to impact these kid’s lives in a way that no one else had. To show them that I cared just as much about their success and thriving lives as they did. If not more. Secretly I began my journey of making an impact daily. Small careful implementations: brownies, cookies, and treats. Not ignoring the ones that are so obviously sad or upset. I let go of my own life for three months and lived theirs without them even noticing. Than today it hit me.
They don’t even notice. How careless of me not to take that small bit of information into account?
So where do I go from here? The whole reason I wanted to become a teacher was because when I was in high school my own teacher was the only one that noticed me. She noticed me hurting when I came back to school after a weekend at the hospital recovering from a miscarriage. She was the one who caught me sleeping in my car in the school parking lot. She was the one that paid for my cap and gown as a “Congratulations. I see you did it. I see you!” To this day I continue to talk to the one teacher that saw me, not for who I was then, but who I was going to be.
So. Where do I go from here? Up? I guess that's the only way.
