all worth it

Being a teacher beats you down. Students are regularly apathetic, frustrating and lazy balls of teenage hormones. I connect with these little people on a personal level everyday, and that is great and can be quite rewarding. However, there is always the underlying "but they still don't get it!" They don't quite see the potential that I see, and have no idea how to go about achieving it.

But then they do. Today a student I taught for the last three semesters, who was nothing short of brilliant, who I had the most interesting conversations with, who just would not do homework and assignments, and who's mark hovered around a 50% the entire time I taught him came to see me. He came to share that he had just received his average for his current math class - and it was an 80%! This is nothing short of miraculous for a student who is truly gifted but just could not be bothered to put his current book down to see what unit we were studying.

It makes all the frustration worth it to know that these little people care enough to share their successes. To know that they do eventually sort out how to balance the different parts of their lives without compromising what they really consider to be important. Even better when they come let me know so I can celebrate with them!