From the Other Side of the Desk

Last week was a hard week of teaching for me. I worked very long hours and had some horrible parent teacher conferences. One of my students was staying after school on Friday and commented that she had heard I had some difficulties with parents at conferences. Shocked, I asked her how she knew. She said, everybody knew. Curious, I asked her how. She said she heard it from the student whose parents didn't like me. All I could manage to say was, "oh," but really I was thinking "great, so now students are bragging about their parents ripping on me."

Lost in reflection over this, I barely heard what my students said next, but I am so glad I did. She told me that even though people were saying I was a bad teacher she wanted me to know that she thought I was doing a good job for my first year. She said that I was the first math teacher she had ever understood. In her previous math class the teacher never really taught them and she was entirely lost. She thanked me for explaining the math step by step because she got it that way. She said her mom also agreed I was a good teacher based on her new understanding of math.

She just wanted me "to know." She was thoughtful, sincere. She'll never know what that meant to me.


From the other side of the desk--thankful I'm not the "worst" teacher in everyone's eyes