I love teaching, but I don't always feel the love. There are tasks around teaching that I don’t enjoy (nothing really is that bad) and there is stress, mostly self-induced, based on the desire to be a reflective practitioner and teach with best practice.
There was something about this week, where I just noticed moments where I felt the love of teaching. Here’s what I’m talking about:
This is 7th Grade
After school I was meeting with a teacher and we heard a knock on the door. It was a student that the teacher had taught last year. She came by to say hello to the other teacher. The teacher I was meeting with took a leave last year and this students wanted to welcome her back. The student said, “I’m so happy to see you, you look wonderful. I wanted to say welcome back to my favorite teacher.” The continued with words of appreciation and warmth. There was nothing sarcastic about her tone. She was being open, honest and genuine about her joy and appreciation for this other teacher. Sometimes in what seems like a sea of attitude and hormones, it's easy to forget that this expression of kindness is very much what being a 7th grader is all about.
Excitement
It was just a middle school band song, and it was very much a middle school band song. I chose it because it was catchy and interesting but it was not a song that I would ever listen for pleasure on my own time. It’s a song that most band teachers, or people who enjoy band music would listen to more than once or twice. When I started playing the song, I gave the students directions on how to follow along with the music. Then I noticed her smiling. Then she started bouncing up and down, and finally she couldn’t hold it in anymore, “I like this SO MUCH!” It was adorable. After class she asked me for a link to the recording so she could listen to it on her phone.
The Interview
I was delighted when I got the email from her. I hadn’t talked to her since I last taught her in 5th grade and now she was a high school senior. She wanted to interview me for an article in the school paper. We scheduled a time and we met up after school. As we talked, I couldn’t get over how much she had grown up. She was confident, thoughtful and a great interviewer. We talked about how her life was going and it was really wonderful to hear about the great things she was doing in her life.
The Story
All I asked my 3rd graders to do was come up with sounds on instruments that sounded like animals. One student took it a step further and came up with an entire story. It started with a baby fox who got lost and eventually found his parents. He told this story musically line on a xylophone and then added harmony. It was creative, fascinating, and a joy to experience.
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