I don't teach for the vanity, and let's face it - teachers do not exactly have the best reputation these days. Something stupid about money-hungry fiends who take up way too much of the taxpayer's money, blah blah blah. It's not like we are educating the future citizens of the world or whatever, so no big deal. For the record, it is a huge burden to teach kids stuff they will never use in real life. Even textbooks have to work extra hard with their fancy graphics and enticing fonts to convince children that modeling the shoulder height of a male African elephant is an example of using cube roots in "real life." Note that the problem states "a male African elephant," as in a (singular) male African elephant. Why the hell does nobody ever care about the female population? What made this particular male elephant so special that he can have his shoulder height modeled by a mathematical function? Won't the other elephants feel left out? Some days I feel as if I am teaching from inside of a five foot thick cinder block that's been buried ten feet underground. A few sympathetic students will strain their ears and squint their eyes, but no one is really listening. Other times my lessons go so horribly that I wish I could morph into a bird and fly away. At least that will be more exciting than what my students will have to endure. There are moments when I forget that teaching is not the same thing as learning, and there are instances when I knowingly commit the heinous crime of giving my students the "I taught it so you should know it" attitude. I know, I'm awful. I have been told that it can take years to make a difference in someone's life, and most of us do not have the privilege of witnessing that change. I have also been told that making a difference in somebody's life can be as simple as handing out a lollipop. My "lollipop" moment happened on my graduation day.
Four years ago I was an orientation leader for the incoming class of con-ed 2015, Queen's University. A couple of us volunteered to write letters to future members of the con-ed family that year. I had a lot of fun with those letters and wrote them on hello kitty paper and decorated the margins with stickers from my personal sticker collection (of which I am very proud of). Only one person out of five responded to my invitation to email any questions or concerns they had to me. Orientation week came and went, and for a while, that was that. In all honesty, I had forgotten all about those letters. But one of those letters had been sent to a young man named Mike. Mike went on to become the Rector of Queen's University in 2014. On the day I received my Bachelors of Education, I walked across the stage of Grant Hall to shake the Rector's hand. He leaned in and said to me, "April I just wanted to tell you that you were the one who wrote the letter to me. The one with the hello kitty stationary and all. I wanted to tell you what a difference it made." I was so shocked I nearly pushed him off the stage (okay, it was a gentle nudge, but my family members who were watching from the balcony swore that it looked like I punched him in the shoulder). That story still gives me warm fuzzies every time I think about it. Who would have thought that a letter I wrote, and purposefully sprinkled with tacky looking gold-trimmed stickers would have been something that could ever have an impact? I mean, okay, I doubt I drastically altered the course of his life by sending him that letter, but I will be forever grateful to Mike for showing me what I difference I have made. To quote Drew Dudley who quoted Marianne Williamson, "Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our greatest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, and not our darkness, that frightens us." Sometimes our students have small ways of telling us we matter, and they will come at moments when we least expect it. On Friday, I complimented a student for the cute stickers she had on her notebook. Surprisingly, stickers are not easy to come by in Kazakhstan, and if you know me, you will know that I am a proud owner of a shoe-box full of stickers that I have been hoarding since I was seven. Today, that student came to school with a pack of happy face stickers. She gave them to me. So, to my fellow teachers who may feel discouraged, worn out, or overworked, I say - teach on! Follow your guts and stick to your principles. Teach because you matter more than you know. Teach because you are powerful beyond measure. Teach because you have the courage to teach.
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April SooInternational math educator who writes, occasionally. Archives
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