You know what? I am not setting the world on fire at my teaching job. I depend on the Lord daily to guide my plans and my actions, and I know He is enabling me to do the work, but I am an average teacher at best. I don't invite students to hang out in my classroom during lunch. I don't stay late or come early to tutor the struggling ones. Sometimes certain students know more than I do about grammar and vocabulary. I have a hard time with students who don't do well or who don't try, even when I know that they don't have very good support at home or a history of academic success. I don't use the latest technology. I tried to make a class website and gave up. I didn't do a very good job of tracking some of my students' late and missing assignments last quarter and consequently their grades were affected.
So what do I bring to the job? An assurance that the Lord put me in this position and He will enable me to do it. A passion for reading and a desire for all to love to read, to be able to write decently, and to have adequate English skills so that they seem educated and not ignorant. I bring love for each and every one of my middle schoolers. They are so precious. I wish each one could know and believe that. Even if I told them, they wouldn't internalize it, they would just cast it off like one more greeting on a Hallmark card. I pray for them when they struggle. I praise them when they succeed, to their faces and to their other teachers and their parents. I try hard to stay on top of my grading; if they put work in, I should respect that by putting my part of the work in in a timely way.
I am feeling inadequate today. I want them all to succeed. Do all teachers feel like this?
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