Sunday, November 19, 2006

Quitting

During my first year as a teacher, I cried every day. I hated my job. The students were horrible and the principal was a nut. There were many days that I thought about quitting. at the end of that year, I was talking with some of the students on class day and we were discussing the year. One commented, "Ms. Bowens, I learned more about life this year with you than I will probably ever learn again." At that point, I realized that not only am I teaching language arts, but I am also teaching about life. Many students spend the entire school year watching their teachers in an attempt to model themselves after someone. I realized that if I carried myself as a lady and a professional at all times then I had the opportunity to positively affect some child without saying a word. I also realized how important those talks were that I always considered a waste of time. I began to see that teaching is so much bigger than we as teachers can imagine during our first year and more rewarding than we will know in our last.

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