Oh yeah, THIS is why I do what I do...

I am assuming since anyone reading this probably knows me personally, you know that I teach. Teaching is a strange career choice. There are days that you wonder if you need psych meds just to get through and then there are those once every year or two days where you have those "aha" moments when you realize WHY you do what you do.

Today's entry is about one of those "aha's". I'll have to back up and give you a little background for it to make sense or otherwise, you'll think it was just another card from another kid...

He and his two younger brothers had transferred in mid semester last year. All three boys are "special services" students but at the time I had (nor wanted) no details on that and what it did or did not entail. I knew that I had taught the youngest and that he would attempt (and normally succeed) pretty much anything I put in front of him.

*My policy on this is give me the paperwork I legally have to have on file, but don't expect me to look at it until I have dealt personally with this kid for at least two weeks-- I want to know what he/she is going to do for ME, not what he/she may have done for someone who was either too busy to care, had low expectations, or whatever the reason may be.*

The only background knowledge I had on the child came from his dealings with other teachers and in all honesty, it wasn't looking good. Again, for the reasons stated above, I normally take any and everything I hear with a grain of salt because I've been doing this long enough to know that students will do as you expect them to do.

I tried to really encourage this little fella. He seemed to be really turning a corner and making huge progress. The kind of progress that makes you sit up and pay attention. LOL! As fate would have it though, we had another student return that flipped the apple cart for this boy and several others unfortunately. Before student "B" had been back a week, my kiddo that had been setting the woods on fire progressing was nearly in a knock down drag out fight with this late-comer, hollering at both students and adults in the hall, and in general undoing everything he'd worked so hard for.

He and I had one of my well known, (and dreaded as previous kids could tell you, IF they would admit to getting it...) "talks". I am all for encouragement, positivity, and building a kid up-- let me promise you that. However, if a fourteen year old is making stupid decisions after two months of proving to you that he is more than capable of making smart decisions, sometimes candy coating it just doesn't work. I am firm believer of giving kids HONEST feedback. If they are doing something that totally jeopardizes their future, someone needs to care enough about them to tell them. This kid was most definitely on that path!

I didn't really know if it worked. That's another of the ambiguous things about teaching. You really don't ever know if they are listening. Much like gardening, you don't get immediate results. Some of your kids end up being like some of these baby daylilies I have begged into existence over the last six months-- it may be a year or two before I see anything out of it. Luckily, in this case, it was only a month or two.

The card itself was not remarkable, however, once opened, this student had drawn images over nearly the entire inside. Two of the most memorable-- a huge "thank you" in one corner and below that a picture that he'd drawn of himself sitting at a computer typing.

Best Christmas present I got this year...