I often hear educators talk about what keeps them up in the night. Sometimes it’s grading essays (why I taught mathematics), or the new standardized assessment, or that one student who knows how to play basketball on your last remaining nerve. There are lots of things that can keep educators (and other professionals) up at night. I prefer to focus on what gets me up in the morning.
My first year teaching was at an inner-city Catholic school. I know that many readers will see Catholic school and think it was a cushy gig with smiling angels for children. It wasn’t that way for an instant. It was every bit an inner-city school that focused on Catholic values within the curriculum. Many of the students were on vouchers and almost all of them were living in poverty. Now, that does not mean they were bad kids, they were just growing up in a challenging environment. In fact, when I look back at my time in the classroom, it’s one child, symbolic of many, that gets me up in the morning. Her name is Alba Kozlov*.
At the time, Alba was in sixth grade. She was quiet and a bit socially awkward at a time when fitting in with your peers is highly valued. Alba and I spent many a lunch together. Sometimes she needed a little help with her math and other times she would offer to sweep the classroom floor or anything to keep from having to go to recess with her classmates. I was always available to help students with math during lunch, but every once in a while I thought it would have been nice to have a lunch period to myself. Sure it was great to have Alba help keep the classroom tidy, but that also meant I didn’t get any downtime. As a new teacher, I didn’t realize how valuable my time with Alba was going to become to both of us.
Alba shared a lot about her home life and sixth-grade-girl drama with me. I began to understand her as a person, not just as a student. As we grew to know each other, it’s not surprising that Alba’s math scores skyrocketed. What was surprising was how excited I was to get to school each day to hear about her night and see how she was doing.
I won’t sugarcoat it. My first year teaching was rough. I paid more in gas to get to school than I was making. I had some rough times and even fled the classroom in tears one day. I thought about leaving. After all, I had just left a lucrative business career to become a teacher, so I could go back to Plan A. The teacher next door to me, who I relied on as a friend and colleague, didn’t come back from Christmas break. There were discipline issues and there were limited funds for teaching supplies and resources. On some days, I was all my students had. But thanks to Alba, I had a reason to get to school in the morning.
As a parent, I had spent lots of money and time taking my children shopping for teacher gifts each Christmas. As my first Christmas as a teacher approached, I was fully prepared to get an assortment of lotions and candles. What I wasn’t prepared for was the gift that Alba gave me. Alba couldn’t afford to buy me a traditional gift, but Alba valued my presence in her life and wanted me to know. So Alba did the best that she could. She grabbed one of those fold over plastic sandwich bags from home and filled it with things from her room. Things that mattered to her. Alba gave me a baggie with three used crayons, a sheet of Disney princess stickers, a few small colored erasers, and some paper clips. She gave it to me during one of our lunch sessions with an apology because it was all she could afford. I looked at that bag and cried, but for the first time that year I was crying because I realized how much I meant to a child.
I came home that day with a variety of teacher gifts, all of which have disappeared somewhere along time, except for Alba’s bag. It sits in a curio cabinet in my home along with Alba’s handwritten note. I pass it each day as I leave for work and it reminds me that as an educator I have an opportunity and an obligation to leave the things that keep me up at night outside my classroom and allow the things that get me up in the morning to make me the educator that my students deserve.
*Not her real name
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