Sunday, September 28, 2014

Why teach? Because magic.

Teaching is magical...and painful, and heart breaking, and stressful and exhausting and life-changing and in some moments, absolutely frustrating. But mostly magic.

There is a thing about teaching that keeps bringing you back. You can't put your fingers on it and you search for that reason while you are sitting at your desk, papers past your ears, way beyond the hours you should work for a healthy lifestyle.

The magic lies in the days with the kids who don't care, whom it seems you will never reach. The same kids who run into you years later and apologize for being that kid and tell you that they never forgot that you never gave up, even when they had. For the kid who refuses to do homework, or show up who you worry about even when they are not even your own child. For the day when they finally come in and ask for help. Even if it is for a few minutes, they came in and cared about something. The magic is in the student that stares at you blankly and questions you on everything and frustrates you because you feel disrespected. You go home at night, still furious when one night you realize, he was asking all the right questions, just in all the wrong ways.

And lastly, the magic is that end of the year moment when you all know it's your last day and you see the heartbreak in your students eyes when they realize they won't see you next year. It's that moment when you unexpectedly reached a kid everyone else had given up on. It's that magical moment that comes at least once a day when one of your students, if not the entire class, teaches you. And together you learn and together you grow and together you create why I teach: magic.

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