So why teach? It sounds exhausting, stressful, and almost impossible to do well! In fact, we teach because the rewards are outstanding.
When your students tell you at the end of the year that they can’t believe how much they’ve learned…that is a reward. When former students, now in college, return to your classroom to get a hug, to thank you for what you did to help them believe in themselves, and to tell your present students what it was like in “their day”…that is your reward.
I just received a letter from the parent of a former student who is now in graduate school. She wrote that she saw a quote and thought of me. It said, “You make a child feel good about himself and that’s a motivation to excel.” That is a reward.
So, in answer to our questions of the 60’s, as teachers, we did change the world. We changed it when we taught children to believe in themselves and to share that knowledge. We changed it by teaching our youngest students to listen, to share, and to respect their classmates and themselves. We changed it by giving our students the tools and skills they needed to change their world. We made this a better world -- one child at a time.
Lindsay Andreas on 17 Dec 09Lists of best sellers, publisher book-sale data, and online booksellers can tell you which books are purchased most often, but they do not know, like we do, which books students actually open and read, cover to cover. It is never a bad idea to know what kids are reading in order to connect in the classroom.
