We Care About Our Students and Often Wonder
What happens to them when they have left our class?
Some teachers jokingly say our field, is one of servitude, like we are in the trenches together, learning and tapering off new and old re-opened wounds from outside sources and some from within (e.g. dealing with challenging and delicate situations, emotional trauma, insecurities, and abuse by others, etc.).
A teacher's world is not one we openly share with others outside our profession. For we feel like others won’t understand us, won’t understand our struggles, or why it is so very, very hard to leave this path we chose for “greener pastures”.
Out of all the teachers I have met and have been teaching for a while, we have one common thread. We love teaching and seeing our students learn; seeing them grow, the possibilities of who they will choose to become, and what they will want to be and do for this world we live in. This is our ultimate reward (might explain why a majority of us are underpaid, too, and typically don’t make a fuss about it).
In my short time as a teacher, I have had one generation complete high school, and one generation complete their college years (a “generation” really meaning students moving to a new level of schooling —i.e. elementary to middle school, to high school, to college).
