The best moments ever as a teacher? You mean just one? 
homework
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Thinking of what makes any single event or moment in one’s career a favourite requires some thoughtful reflection. To be honest, I feel like I have lots of moments that stand out to me and make what I do worthwhile. It can range from a simple conversation with a student that demonstrates they have achieved some level of accomplishment of understanding to how a team you coached performed. A day in the life of a teacher is full of some good, bad and ugly moments. The stories told when you get a room full of teachers together are endless. They can entice laughter, tears and shock. The homework told us to focus on the best moments so I will save some of the bad and the ugly for another day.
The first moment that comes to mind when thinking of the moments that stand out as the best in my teaching career comes from my first year of teaching. In my first year of teaching, I taught a grade one class. Straight out of teachers college and into the fire with 6-year-old kids who were depending on first-year teacher me to teach them arithmetic and how to read and write. Needless to say, I was feeling a ton of pressure. I was very lucky to get the position straight out of teachers college. It was a long-term occasional position. Basically, I was filling in for someone on stress leave for the year. Looking back now, I was in no way prepared for the job. Teacher’s college teaches you a lot of things but it can’t truly prepare you for having your own class right away. I was young and eager and needless to say, I jumped in with both feet and a ton of enthusiasm.
I can do this
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Being a first-year teacher, there were lots of ups and downs as you can imagine. I sincerely feel like I couldn’t have been luckier in terms of a position to start my career. I was very fortunate to have a colleague who was also teaching grade 1 that year and she took me under her wing and helped guide me through my first year. This co-teaching experience help to set me up with a cooperative mindset for my whole career. Now, I have always been a cooperative person and a team player but it was great to see how this could be applied in the teaching field. We worked together to create lesson plans, teach levelled guided groups and organize a variety of other initiatives in the school.
I learned skills that year that have carried forward and continue to be part of who I am as a teacher. In fact, I have been able to pass along some of this with other teachers along my journey. Teaching can be a job where people get into a routine and stick to themselves and do their thing making it hard to foster co-teaching efforts. It can be rewarding to help show other teachers the benefits of co-teaching. I went into that first year of teaching a nervous new teacher and came out with a confidence and knowledge I never expected I could have gained in just a single school year. I will forever be grateful to her for taking the time to work with me and making my first teaching experience such a positive and rewarding one. Thank you!
The second significant positive moment actually came this year. The funny part about this moment is that it was with one of the most difficult students I have had in a very long time. I have had many positive moments with students and parents and colleagues along the way, but I am choosing this one because to me it reflects a huge part of what I am trying to achieve as a teacher. It was a situation where a whole lot of that good, bad and ugly got all balled up into one and in the end, I think we found a positive outcome and some solid character development. One of the students in my class this year happened to be a very opinionated young man. He was a popular kid who didn’t always use his influence in the most positive ways. He worked hard academically, got good grades and had lots of friends. Where he struggled consistently was in terms of his overall character and how he treated others. Countless times throughout the year, he would find himself in trouble or in the office even for his harsh words towards others. The unfortunate side of this behaviour is that he rarely showed remorse and felt justified in his actions or words. These same issues often manifested in disrespectful moments with teachers. Most often these problems occurred outside my classroom while out on recess but occasionally during other teachers classes as well.
I had many conversations with this young man throughout the year in an effort to both defuse situations and to coach him. He often spoke of how he had always been getting in trouble at school and that teachers just didn’t like him and he couldn't change that. It was true that he had created a reputation for himself along the way and was certainly a frustrating student for some teachers but where he was wrong was when he said: “I’m just a bad person and will always get in trouble”. I explained how that is not the case and that there is always the chance to change how people perceive you. He was living a self-fulfilling prophecy and felt that teachers didn’t like him anyway so why try.
By the end of the year, he was having far less of these problems and was actually recognized on several occasions by teachers for his helpfulness. He even went out of his way to help a grade 4 teacher with her class while we were outside working on some other things. During the last week of school, he approached me and asked to talk. He wanted to thank me for always supporting him, even when things were not going well. He said that he never felt that a teacher was ever willing to work with him and that he will always appreciate the chats that we had. I expressed to him how proud I was of his efforts and how I can see so much potential in him. He just has to want it. This was followed up by his mom coming and thanking me after grad for all the support. This might be one of the proudest moment I have had as a teacher and I look forward to checking in on him as he progresses through high school.
I could easily go on for hours about the great moments I have had. Teaching is one of those jobs that provide us with these unique opportunities to play a big role in the growth and development of other people. Our efforts will always leave a long-lasting impact on our students and likewise, they will leave their footprints on our lives. After almost 15 years I can honestly say, there is nothing I would rather be doing. I’m looking forward to the next 15 years to come.
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