Blessed...But Still Stressed?

My mind has been moving a mile a minute lately, juggling between lesson planning, grading, reteaching, offering Coach Class for students who need extra help, coaching Science Olympiad, coaching Volleyball, running to meetings for special ed students, and going to games and special events for the students who tell me about their band performances, basketball games, swim meets, and debate tournaments.

My schedule is hectic, it's true, but none of it is stressful. In fact, this is all fun (well, maybe not the special education meetings, but the rest is a blast!) The best blessing of all is having students who are nice, care about the world, and mostly work hard.

But, as at every school, there are some students who seem not to care. I can't get them to do their homework. I can't get them to participate in group projects. I can't get them to break out of their shell and join in discussions, much less lead them. And some of them complain incessantly - Dr. A gives too much homework, Dr. A assigns too much classwork, Dr. A this isn't math class, Dr. A how do you expect me to do all that in 3 days (assignment: outline 6 pages from a textbook and answer the 5 questions). I stress "seem" above because deep down I know there is a way to reach even the seemingly most unreachable. I just haven't discovered it yet - but I will! I still have a couple months left to reach them!

But while trying to reach even the seemingly most unreachable, I'm frustrated by the lack of acknowledgment of how good it actually is at this school. Almost none of my students here deal with the same challenges as my students in Baltimore once did. I know "challenge" is a subjective term and we should be so thankful that not every child is going through the same struggles as the majority of my Baltimore kids went through. But when you have seen both sides of the coin - the blessed and the truly stressed - you can't help but remind the blessed that they truly are "too blessed to be stressed."