Pot Holders and Tears

Tonight is my first official night of summer vacation. I am thoroughly enjoying the idea of staying up late tonight to watch brainless, mindless television and catch up on some blog writing. My summer vacation has been broken into two parts, the first part consists of last part of June and the second part of vacation is the entire month of August. July will be spent teaching the small people during the Extended School Year program, where I get the opportunity to teach students who are roughly a quarter of my age.

This past school year has been filled with highs and lows, due mainly to the part that I have been teaching a behavior disorder class (BD for short), that consisted of an average of three middle school students, who had the bodies of teenagers and the minds of small children, which definitely resulted in some unique and interesting experiences. At a certain point in the year, I stopped becoming their teacher and more like a mother. I had to make sure they were eating breakfast (and lunch), doing their homework, getting sleep, and all of the other things that a parent should be providing for their children.

During my year, I encountered a student who is like no other. I could call him a problem child, but that would be an understatement. S is an extremely oppositional person, getting a thrill out of arguing with anyone over the most mundane things. For example, if you were to ask him what color the sky was, he would have a giant debate that the sky is white due to the clouds. To sum him up simply, he was a walking headache.

By the end of the year, I was convinced that S didn't like me, but I was proven completely wrong during the last few days of schools. To begin with, he had to spend the day with Berman (who he detested all year for absolutely no reason). Suddenly, he thought Berman was the coolest teacher in the building and was trying to make excuses to visit her. He wanted to share the remaining food in our classroom with her class and even made me a fancy pot holder using Berman's fancy pot holder making contraption (I'm sure there is a term for the device but I have no clue what it is). To top off the entire experience, as he was leaving school on the last day, he gave me a huge hug and had a couple of tears.

That my friend, is why I became a teacher. It isn't for the pay check, having the summer off, or the medical benefits. It's the small rewards in life of knowing that I made a difference in someone's life.