This past Friday, May 16th, our teaching staff were treated to a special day, organized by students, that was dedicated to celebrating and appreciating these teachers. The students did a fantastic job organizing the activities and classroom celebrations of the day. These types of celebrations, this recognition, along with simple thank yous or a student’s smile, goes a long way to remind us why we first became educators and reinforce our sense of value in this profession.
Teaching is not an easy job; at times, it can even seem impossible.
There is the curriculum, be it: gerunds, dribbling a basketball, the periodic table, literatura, colouring inside the lines, quadratic equations, robotics, and the list goes on – this would be easy enough, but it is merely the tip of the iceberg. There are also the soft skills: managing the learning of 20 to 30 young individuals at one given time and upwards to 100, even more, in any given day, delicately communicating concerns about a student’s behaviour with honesty to parents when it might be the last thing they want to hear about their child, maintaining a level of patience that can seem unimaginable at times, all the while greeting students with warmth and grace. Teachers wear many hats: managers, actors, graphic designers, first responders, care givers, artists, advocators, diplomats, editors, mediators, programmers, social workers, referees, judges, lawyers and comedians. Of course, this is all in a day’s work – the impossible.
We do it because it can be incredibly rewarding, because it is our vocation, our calling. We entered this profession for our own unique reasons, but with the same goal: to have an impact, however big or small, on the students we teach. To make a difference. And to teach our students that, maybe, just maybe, with hard work, effort and dedication, nothing is impossible.
