Today is Teacher Appreciation Day! In honor of this day, I thought I would share a little bit of what I've been experiencing lately. For those of you that don't know, I work as a teacher assistant at an alternative school. I've been there since the beginning of January and have come to love that school. The staff are such a tight knit group of people and they have included me as one of their own. The students are just as awesome. They're definitely...unique in their own ways, but that's what I've come to love about them.
Challenges come around every other minute at my school and I really have to be prepared for anything. I mean anything. I won't go into detail, but let's just say that they have no censors, they aren't afraid to get into each others' faces, and they can explode at any second. So many of our students come to us with some sort of behavioral issue and throughout their time with us, we hope to help them control their behavior and turn into a mature, young adult. Some students buy into our system, but others just want to turn 18 and drop out. It's really sad to see some of our students who have so much potential just give up, but it happens quite often and, honestly, there isn't much we can do for them once they hit that point.
Luckily, with these challenges, we find success through the hard work. Many of the teachers know that I have a gift in math and they take advantage of that as much as possible. I've helped at least three students understand algebra, geometry or trigonometry to fulfill their credits and move past math. They all needed a lot of prompting and detailed explanation to complete their work. What's funny is that every single student has, at some point, told me some sort of story about how they can't do their work. Here are some examples:
"I was up until 3 last night. I'm so tired and I can't work."
"My stomach hurts from lunch. I think I ate something weird."
Or my personal favorite and the most commonly used phrase:
"When are we ever going to use this after high school?!"
I always have to laugh at them when they try to get out of their work. Eventually, we'll get back to it and get something accomplished.
There's a story that I have to share that just happened today. I've been working with a male student on math for the past couple months on a computer program. He has to finish so many lessons to get his credit and he only has about 13 more to go. Sadly, we had been stuck on a lesson for the past week or longer. He would come in and take an automatic focus, which in our school basically means he's gotten himself into trouble and takes time to refocus in a separate room. Other times he would just get frustrated with the problems because he would confuse certain steps of the problems with others. Basically, we could not get past the lesson without having to explain all of the material over and wasting a whole block. Finally, today, he came in and somehow gathered himself enough to complete the lesson's test and move past it. I only prompted him a couple of times and he passed with flying colors. The smile on his face and the satisfaction of knowing that he had passed the test was so rewarding. I left that class feeling so accomplished. It was such a small step in his class, but such a large step for him personally. I was so proud of him and his ability to somehow get it done even though he was tired of me bugging him and trying to get him to understand the work.
These are the times that I'm really glad I went into education. I love helping students understand their work and I try my best to make a positive impact on their lives. Like I said, most days come with challenges that can be stressful and frustrating, but then it's times like these that make it all worth it. Happy Teacher Appreciation Day!
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