Saturday, November 16, 2013

Turns Out, My Students Love Me

“The soul is healed by being with children.” -Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Stories of a first year teacher: Unconditional Love Edition

A student who can be incredibly defiant, has been caught stealing from me, and gave me major attitude this morning started bawling as I explained what a "Teacher Down Drill" meant.

(ie if something happened to me--I got hurt or fainted, what happens? Two kids run to the office and alert them, and two more run to the nearest classroom for help. The rest of the kids need to remain calm. Judging by the drill, let's hope this NEVER happens because I will die. Realistically, my kids WILL recognize an emergency if it does come around. Anyway, back to today.)

This had happened before--not a Teacher Down, but the bawling and disrupting class and making a small thing into an attention seeking adventure regarding some minor incident, so I pushed through my explanation and got the kids working on practicing the letter "x" (exercising fox).

So then, I am able to turn my attention to my crying friend.

"What's wrong honey?" "

"I don't want anything to happen to you!" Hugs ensue and reassurance that it's just practice, and should hopefully never happen.

heart. melted.