When you love what you do

My sister has been an elementary music teacher for 11 years and she's burnt out. She has already filed papers to take a sabbatical next school year. She's going to be a Stay-at-Home Mom and In-Home Daycare Provider at her house. I have another friend who is a teacher in another country and she has gotten so fed up with her situation that she walked in and resigned this week. I hear grumbling in the teacher's lounge about this or that policy or lack of administrative support or whatever. There are grumpy teachers everywhere and to some degree I can't blame them. It is really hard (and often thankless) work.

But right now I am absolutely loving what I'm doing. I'm not even getting paid a full teacher's salary yet and my position is only temporary. But I so love the challenge of figuring out what each individual kid needs and coming up with a plan to give it to him/her. I love gathering the resources that'll help it stick with them. I never felt this thrill when I worked in a library and now that I've found it, I can't imagine doing anything else.

This week I had visions of my dad working through me as I sat at a table working with one of the girls. My dad was a classroom teacher for over 30 years. He is also a silly and goofy person. He'd come up with all of these silly stories to help kids remember things. One that I remember is the Gozintas. He taught 6th grade math and he'd talk about the Gozintas. When someone would ask him who are the Gozintas? He'd say, "You know, three Gozintas twelve four times and two Gozintas six three times." High school kids would come back to visit him years later and they'd ask him things like how the Gozintas were doing. ;-) Every year the graduating seniors in his school corporation were asked to invite their favorite elementary and secondary teachers to a banquet to celebrate their graduation. My dad was invited every year. And last year was the year his last class graduated and, not only was he invited again, he received a plaque as the award for having been selected for the most consecutive years by graduating seniors. That was pretty cool. He definitely made an impression on a lot of kids.

I thought of him as I introduced Emily to writing money amounts with Dollar Sign and his partner the Decimal Point. I kept emphasizing that they work together and you never see the Dollar Sign without his partner. We did a lot of practice using a dry erase board and if she forgot the decimal I'd say, "Wait a minute...what did we forget?" and she'd grin and say, "His partner!" I reminded her that his partner had a very important job: he has to separate the dollars from the cents! I kept giving her money amounts and having her write them and by the end of class she was consistently doing it correctly!

I love this job.