IT'S HARD: “I’M A WHOLE-PERSON TEACHER”
“The struggle is real (….) Twenty years ago we were the content person. Now I'm trying to get you socially what you need and emotionally what you need. And I still need to teach you this content and I have to help you grow up a little bit (…) I'm a whole-person teacher versus just showing you the cool stuff of science. And I think that is overwhelming because I'm not trained for that. I don't even know if I'm good at it.”
REMEMBERING THAT KIDS WILL COME BACK LATER AND SAY I HAD AN IMPACT
“At the end of the year (…) it happens that you get one kid that will say something like ‘You inspired me’, or ‘Thank you for doing this’, and it refills that cup a little bit.”
“It is a struggle when I call home and I'm responsible for what the kid did and not the kid. And it it's hard when I'm working harder to get the kid to pass than the kid (…) It's hard and it does wear on you and it's frustrating. But then there's the one kid that comes back two years later and sends you an email like, ‘Hey, I was struggling with this and your kindness helped me.’ I feel good as a human being, just that I made a difference in one person's life.”
“I think that it always happens. You could have the worst year and someone will say something, or you'll get a note in your mailbox. And you're, like—Okay. This made it worth it.”
“I was cleaning out my desk the other day and I found a bunch of Thank You notes I have from when I started teaching, and I feel like I forgot about these. But maybe if I read these every morning—And, you know, when a kid at the end of the year requests to be your friend on Facebook (…) you're like, Oh, my gosh! They want us! They want to know me.”