Writing

“Little do you know I’m trying to pick myself up, piece by piece.”

True story.

I remember sitting listening to my friends talk about their breakups and their heartbreaks and I thought, man I could never survive that.

Well, I definitely have a flair for the dramatics. Even though it is hard, I am surviving.

Throwing myself into teaching helps. Some nights the ache is so powerful that I forget to breathe. To keep moving forward.

One step at a time.

That’s all it is, after all.

So back to the subject of this blog, teaching.

There is a lot to be said about teaching, especially a class for the low performing readers. They lose an elective people. They come in my classroom door already on guard.

So to keep them from hating us even more, we decided to give them something they desperately need.

Open gym.

Those two words to middle schoolers are like Nirvana. Their eyes got wide, their smiles spread, and the adrenaline in their body physically manifested itself.

We are now not the ones writing referrals, the ones fighting them to learn, the ones that are exposing their weaknesses. We are the coolest teachers in the world.

And though being “cool” is not the goal, isn’t that relationship important? Isn’t that what we are striving for everyday? Let me tell you, this is working.

I’m hearing them say thank you. Middle school boys don’t say that very often.

Teaching is so much more than the classroom….so much more.