With Kids Like These...

As I type, a group of about 35 very nice kids - I mean truly kind and nice - are taking a quiz. I'm subbing at Tenaya Middle School today and these kids are absolutely amazing. I don't mean academically, although they all strike me as hard-working, also, but I especially mean inter-personally. They are just so kind! You can have conversations with them and there is no mistrust of the teacher - so you can talk with them in a professional instead of adversarial way! And you can talk about their future in college and how academics pays off and get into deep discussions about future plans. It is so rewarding that I told one class that if I had kids like this, I might have stayed in teaching longer.

I know some of you are going to read that last sentence above and try to mischaracterize the wonderful and awesome children I had in Baltimore. Please don't do that. That is not my intention at all - and I'm not selling out on the mission of providing an excellent education to EVERY child in our Nation. They deserve it and as a society we must strive to make this happen. I'm just saying that the job is challenging. Teachers who purposefully step into difficult and challenging school environments with high-needs kids, like I did for two years, do it knowing that they have accepted a much more difficult challenge that is taxing on the soul. And if I had the choice, I would walk right into the lion's den again.

All I'm saying is that it is also nice to see what schools and teaching could be like from the other perspective, of working in a school with a much easier student population.