Day 2: Lighting a Fire

You know I had no idea what I was going to write about. Honestly, I was about to write about how stressed out school makes me. The newest "fad" in education our state is adopting and test scores. There's not a day that goes by that I'm not constantly worried about are my kids going to be proficient, am I going to keep my job if my test scores are low, can I do better than last year, etc. I was so stressed today. And, lately, all this politics stuff with teaching and meetings upon meetings at school has just had me kind of down. I had emailed a parent earlier and was checking to see if there was a reply, and this was the first message in my inbox:

"Hi! I hope you are having a fabulous week! So, this week, we were making a study guide for our English exam. Since we really haven't done much English this year yet, ( we've been reading a lot. ) our teacher was trying to teach us a ton of it in very little time. Luckily for me, I had an amazing English teacher last year and I already knew all of it. So, while everyone else made a B on the test, I made an A. Just wanted to say thank you for everything you taught us last year! Enjoy your Fall Break! I miss you so much! Thank you for pushing us so hard. High school would be a lot harder if you hadn't been my teacher! You're awesome!"

If only this student knew how much I needed this. Now, with eyes full of tears, I have a smile on face and a smile on my heart. Often, the subject of how much teachers impact their students' lives is what we hear and read; however, I've learned a lot of the time it's 50/50. My students impact me in ways unimaginable. This student is such a beautiful person inside and out; I have no doubt she will do GREAT things:)

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." ~William Butler Yeats