One of the main things that bothers me as an educator is that so many of my colleagues lose sight of the fact that it is our duty to serve the kids we teach and not the other way around. I really feel that it is our responsibility to help the kids achieve as mcuh as they possibly can in whatever they choose to do. Too many teachers, I feel, get caught up in their own little world and do not look at the bigger picture. It is real easy to judge a child only on the basis of what you see from them in your classroom, but we need to look at the whole child. I tell my kids all the time, and I truly mean it, that I don't think I am better or more important than they are because I am good in math (my subject area) and they are not. If they were all good in math, then they wouldn't need me. :) My room is full of people with many and varied talents. I have two students that have won artistic awards and one student that can play over 20 musical instruments, quite well from the 7 I have heard him play at this point in time. I have absolutely NO musical or artistic talent whatsoever. I ask them not to hold that against me since I don't hold their mathematical shortcomings against them.
If you are an educator, PLEASE take the time to look for the good in your kids. They all have it in there some where...you may have to look real hard to find it in one or two of them, but when you do find it, it will be one of your most rewarding and memorable moments of your educational career. I have a student this year who has been in trouble in school a great deal the previous two years and was going down that same path this year. I started talking to him, one-on-one, the very first week of class and trying to get him to think about his actions, where he was headed, what he wanted to do, etc. I talked with him at least a couple of times a week and started to see some improvement in his attitude and actions about a month ago. Then, just last week, this big bear of a guy brought tears to my eyes. There was a pretty bad fight after school just up the road from our school. There were around 100 kids from different schools there according to everyone I have talked to about it. This young man was there himself and he was a good friend of some of the ones getting into it. What brought the tears to my eyes was the day after the incident when our asst. principal came and pulled him out of class to ask him about his participation and this young man looked at me as he talked to the asst. principal, and he told him that he did not get involved at all, that he did what Mr. Medley had been telling him the whole year. He said he thought about what was going on and what it looked like was about to happen and he decided he had to leave, so he got in his car and went straight to practice. There IS good in ALL of them...you just have to keep looking.