Making the decision to educate students with educational deficits takes a visionary. It is important to remember your "why" that brought you to the profession. Remember the excitement that came from browsing the aisles looking for the perfect grade book, browsing videos on different teaching styles and putting together your first day of school outfit. Your excitement in the least matched that of the most elated student walking into your classroom. You were just as if not more nervous than your scholars. The class roster you received, if you’re blessed, came alive and your brain began to compartmentalize those who were reachable and those who you were determined to make reachable.

 

So, can you save every child, in one way or another, the idealist in me says yes, but each year of receiving scholars’ grades below their current expected level begins to blur the glass of student expectations. Once, you believed all students can learn, now you are not sure you can really teach any of them to their full potential. I challenge you to remember your "why".

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• Why you decided to educate instead of anything else that seemed more gratifying?

• Why you chose to forgive these little humans who step deliberately on every emotional nerve, only for them to have amnesia the next day regarding their seemingly wrong doings?

• Why did you choose to continue to love hard and dig deep and give of yourself for a return you may never directly see?