Students Are The Real Teachers ... Part 1

He was one of the kids I had been warned about: Rowdy. Wild.  Undisciplined.  Rumor had it he was the sole cause a previous teacher had quit.   If I was going to survive the year, I would need to be firm. In control.  The boss.   As a novice teacher, I was nervous.    Would I be able to handle the challenge? Did I really want this stress? What if I couldn’t control the class?

What I encountered the first day of school was a boy: Energetic. Eager. Excited for a fresh start.  He didn’t know what I had been told about him. I didn’t tell him.  New school year, New teacher = Clean Slate.

He was sweet, funny, playful, inventive.  He was wiggly, talkative, quick tempered, easily distracted.  He forgot homework that I had seen him working on in class. He lost important papers, notes that needed to go home. His desk was a disaster zone.  He would get frustrated with me and my rules, and with himself.

Sometimes when he was hyper, I would send him out to run a lap (or two) around the playground field, to work off his extra energy. Come in when you can concentrate.  Sometimes I invented excuses for him to leave the classroom for a few minutes, to walk to the office to drop off a “note” to the secretary, or to deliver papers to a teacher down the hall.  I kept a special folder on my desk so he wouldn’t lose his classwork between the classroom and home and his return to school the next day.  

I worried that my “help” was really going to hurt him in the long run.  I wasn’t teaching the “life lessons” he needed to learn.  I wasn’t forcing the personal responsibility he was going to need for school later on, or for a successful life … but for the first time, he was succeeding. His grades were improving.  Kids in the class volunteered to help him with classwork so he didn’t have to take it home.  They helped him clean his desk out, organizing it and re-organizing it when it got messy.   I worried I was teaching the other kids to enable. 

People commented on what a changed boy he had become.  His attitude was different, they said. He isn’t a terror, they marveled.  I wondered what they were talking about.  He was the same sweet kid he had been the first day of school.  Who was the monster they all described?

Report card time came.  He made the Honor Roll.  The whole class cheered as he went to receive his award.  They told me it was the first time in his life he had ever made Honor Roll.  I had no idea that this was his first time experiencing success.  His mom thanked me later, with tears in her eyes, for all that I had done to help.  It was and still is the most fulfilling moment of my entire teaching career. 

At the end of the year ceremony, I predicted a bright, successful future for this boy.  I hoped that he felt like someone, at some point in his life, believed in him.  I married, moved away, lost contact with the boy and others who knew him.  I have no idea where he is or who he has become. 

I often feel discouraged and frustrated with my job.  The expectations are so high and really unrealistic.  “Teachers Inspire” we are told – but we rarely hear or see the results of having been an “inspiration.”   I don’t know if I have made a difference in the lives of my students in the years since this boy. But I do know that for one boy, for one year, I helped.  He is the reason why I stayed a teacher.  He is the one I think about when I feel like giving up.  I don't know if, or who the next one will be, or when, or how, but I do know the clichéd saying is true: Teachers DO make a difference in someone’s life … sometimes.