How You Know You’re Doing Something Right

I worked in a high school outside of Washington DC. It was a school with a rougher reputation; on more than one occasion I was asked if I felt safe there, even from colleagues at other schools in the district. It was my first or second year of teaching and I was a general education teacher. What this meant was that sometimes I was a student’s only teacher who was not in the special education department, and I was often pulled for IEP (Individualized Education Program) or similar meetings. 

I was summoned for a meeting about a student in one of my classes, a female sophomore. The teacher running this meeting discussed the student’s home issues and gave the opportunity for others to discuss how she was in class. Her attendance was an issue, amongst other things. My heart broke due to her situation, and I was shocked by everything I heard because that was not my experience with her. This girl was absolutely wonderful in my class; she showed up and participated, and she started a silly tradition on one of my whiteboards. (That tradition was eventually transposed into a notebook that I still have in my possession fifteen years later, long after ending my teaching career.)  

There were only four classes a day, and I had this student during the last class period of the day, which started around 12:30. On a day I knew she was absent in the morning, I saw her during a time between classes. I said something to her about being late. It was probably sarcastic, which was the beauty of teaching teenagers.)

Student: “I only come for your class.”