Myself/My Students

I seem to learn something about myself each year. The past three years teaching have been rewarding as well as stressful at times. I have learned patience, patience and more patience. I am somewhat used to giving people orders and they pretty much follow them, but the students today are so different. I am still adjusting to that. At my old job, I was able to leave the worries of the job behind, but now I can't. I find myself thinking of something to do for my students all of the time or I am thinking about that student having a hard time and what I can do to assist them in some way. I tend to look after them like they are my own. Before contracts came out, I was thinking of searching for a new job because of all of the issues we are having, but I always think about my students, especially my sophomores that were freshmen when I first started at Riverdale. At the end of last year, they asked me see them through their Senior year and I really don't want to let them down.

The most important thing I have learned about my students is that they just want someone to show that they really care about them. I find myself looking after the students that have been labeled as "bad", but I seem to get through to them. They will come to class and work for me when they won't for others. This really makes me feel like I am making a difference in their lives. At our school, they seem to focus on the students who are at the top or our athletes and the students in the middle or at the bottom get left out, those are the students that I seem to reach and make sure I make extra time for them. Sometimes when our students are acting our, they are looking for attention and instead of them going somewhere getting negative attention, I want to be that positive person in their lives. So, I try to make myself available to them as much as possible.