2010-2011

It is almost the end of June and its been a week since the beginning of my temporary work free life aka Summer.   Wow.  I remember going back to work after summer thinking, it's only September.  Summer is sooooo far away.  Apparently not so.  I haven't written much about work this year.  I haven't written much about anything, really.  Maybe because there was too much on my mind this year and it was hard to articulate it all.   I could have written about how hard we prayed for mom's healing.  But then I would have to write about how he didn't heal her and discuss a lot of why questions.  I could have written about the struggle I have  understanding and separating God's will and person's choice and how lifestyle of a human does or does not predestine his or her longevity.  But, that I will leave that for another time.

Back to work.  2010-2011 was a great year.  I had sweet students majority of whom genuinely cared about learning and about improving their English.  There wasn't a day that I dreaded going to work this year.  I looked forward to every lesson and seeing every student.  Wow, I cannot believe I just said this because God knows there were plenty of times in the years past that I did not feel this way.  It seemed like they enjoyed my classes too; we worked hard, but had fun while at it.  There was chemistry.  They got my jokes, I laughed at theirs.  They felt sad for me and expressed their condolences when they learned that my mom in-law passed away.  I accepted their sympathy. 

I taught two Advanced level ELD (English Language Development) courses and one ESL math class.   All classes were considerably small (math had the most at 18 students) which allowed for many one on one interactions.

Working with these students and getting to know them gave me hope.  In an era where everyone is plugged in to everything and teenagers are as rebellious as ever and cyberbullying is at its peak and economy does not promise those graduated jobs, there are still good kids out there. God knows I didn't have this fuzzy feeling about my students nor did I think that many of them offered hope.   It is true that I had bad, even rotten kids before whom I unfortunately were not able to help and they eventually were "weeded" out.  I wrote about these kids on this blog and what a difficult time I had with them.

Though I've lost a lot of kids and felt like I failed them, a lot of them keep stopping by my room and chatting with me.  Many of them asked to be my students aids and I have seen them change from a crazy freshman to a mature, college bound senior.

As I think about the upcoming year and the difficult classes I am supposed get I need to remind my self of the only weapon that works for these kids.  That weapon is all forgiving, all enduring love.  The crazy class of 2008-2009 year was transformed and became teachable (which was a huge progress, trust me) only after weeks of pouring love on to them despite their wild, disrespectful, inappropriate behavior.

So, it is bittersweet for me to say good bye to my good kids this year.  I look forward to summer, but I also loved teaching them.  I never know what next school year will bring, I only know that I will most likely be there for half of it the reason for which I will discuss in my upcoming posts.  It it surely a good reason :)