To be loved

My students make me feel loved every day. They really do. I am so lucky. They make me feel so loved with their smiles, their looks, their words and just being themselves. Some of them make me feel like a famous rock star with their reactions to me some days. I love my students. I really do.

Since I teach kindergarten through 8th grade you can imagine who makes me feel like a rock star. The little ones, the five and six year olds who see me in the hallway and scream, “HOLA! as if they are surprised I am outside of my classroom… so excited to see me out and about. It’s an awesome “job”. I hardly ever call it my job or work. Most days it doesn’t feel like work (of course there are some days when it is definitely work.). I am so fortunate to go to a place almost every day where I feel loved. My older students make me feel just as loved. These middle school kids are so hilarious. What a crazy stage in life. The things they ask me about and the things they are interested to know about me reminds me of the way I felt about my beloved swim coaches throughout my life whom I loved and adored and couldn’t wait to talk with and spend time with. They scream hola just as loudly in the hallway. It is hilarious.

Now the hard part of my “job”…….

I have to remember each day to make every one (well most I hope) of my students feel just as loved and validated as they make me feel. It is SO difficult some days. My husband says I try too hard and think too much and he never remembers any of his teachers doing what I do or worrying about what I worry about. So that makes my task all the more important to me. I have these kids as my students for NINE years. That is a long time. The hardest part of my job is making sure these kids feel as loved as they make me feel for that LONG period of time. As human beings we just DO NOT all get along. That is just human nature. So when I have a student that proves to be very difficult to love, man do I ever learn A TON from that kid!

I just finished the book “Breaking Night” by Liz Murray from homeless to Harvard. She is living proof of what feeling loved and validated by her teachers can do!