teaching

Can any other job be compared to teaching? I just had a conversation with one of my friends about teaching. She's in 6th grade and I'm in 1st, so our classrooms are about as opposite as the north and south pole. But the really cool thing is that we are both positioned in extremely influencial parts of a person's life.

I'm with the little ones, who are developing their confidence, their hopes, their faith. I get to encourage them to try their best, get excited about every little victory, and be an example of how to talk to God and live for Him. She's influencing the ones teetering in the middle, when they start to make decisions based on what they believe, when they choose to let God become an integral part of their everyday lives or not, helping them understand what good choices and bad choices really look like.

Both are such big roles. Teaching is so much more than teaching. This hit me hard when a parent was talking to me yesterday at parent conferences about how he supported me in disciplining his child. He said, "You spend more time with him than I do." Wowwww. This is the reality. What an honor. What a responsibility.

There's this one little boy in my class. Alesso. He's brilliant and he wants to travel all over the world and learn all the languages. He goes up to my map and traces his finger to all the places he wants to go and asks me questions about the world. I can't go over how special this kid is. There is so much depth in his light brown eyes. And he is such an encouragement to me. He randomly tells me during lessons that I am funny and tricky. He wrote in a letter. "You are my best teacher. You rock Miss Wrasman. 1C (our class) is rock for you? This class is my best grade."

I loved teaching my kids. Now if I could just get all these lesson plans done.....