My First Year Teaching

After the very last day of school at Salem Junior High, all the teachers sat in the cafeteria eating lunch to celebrate the end of it all. I sat by the art teacher, who turned to me and asked: "Did you have a bunch of students hang-up a poster in your room today?"

I recalled watching a boy in my last class of the day scurry up to the white board and try to hang-up a poster on my board. When the white board failed, I had suggested that he try stapling it to the builtin board instead. 20 too many staples later, the poster hung on my wall. It said: "We are going to miss you!!!" and had the signatures of many of my students on it.

"Yes," I replied.

"Yeah," the art teacher continued, "This student came to me today frantically asking for a piece of poster paper. I told him there was no more poster board left in the whole school. After more persistence, I finally offered him an extremely large piece of paper. You saw what it said, right?"

I smiled. "I did."

"I'll just point out that no one made me a big poster," she replied.

Yup--my students made me this awesome huge poster on the last day of school that said: "We will miss you!!!" and had a ton of signatures. Many of the students who didn't have a chance to sign the poster graffitied my whiteboard with goodbyes. Others brought me treats. One even brought me a carton of ice cream because I always talk about how it's the best food in the world!

Man, teaching these kids this past year was one of the best experiences of my life. I doubt that there's any better place to intern as a full-time first year teacher than at Salem Junior High. Though there were some rough patches, the kids always made it easy because they were so good. I'd have people come in to observe me and say things like: "Wow--you have really good classroom management!" and I'd be like: "No--they're just really good kids!"

I'm so grateful for the opportunity to have been a teacher this past year and to have felt like I made a bit of a difference in the lives of some of those kids. I went all year wondering sometimes, but that last week I received an outpouring of love so big as to erase all doubt: they did think that I did make a difference. I hope that I have the opportunity to teach middle school again, but we'll see what the future holds. For now, knowing that I helped these kids is enough.