My dear friend Nichole has just returned from maternity leave. She is having a hard time with the adjustment, to put it mildly. If you have ever had to leave an infant at home all day, so that you could return, sleep-deprived, to work, you will know that it is hell. As a former maternity refugee, I have been trying to offer as much empathy and encouragement as I can. Granted, it is no easy task to over-ride hormones and an overwhelming instinct that tells you that leaving your child is wrong, but I give it the old college try.
At lunch today, I reminded her that she is
called to be a teacher. She is certainly called to be a mother - she has been Mama Bear to her students since she came to our school. She is, in every way, a remarkable mother. The problem is, she is also a remarkable teacher. It's like she was born to it. And I believe that she was.
Most teachers have always known they would be teachers one day; many of us are from families of teachers. It's as if it were in our DNA, as if we were destined to teach. Or, as I believe, we were made and shaped and led each day to come to the calling of teaching.
Teaching
is a calling. It's that way with every job that requires you to pour your heart and soul into it for little or no pay. Other jobs take as much - if not more - time every day as teaching does, and many even take the physical and psychological energy. Most of those jobs, however, offer incredible financial gain as a compensation. Not teaching. Nor preaching, nor painting, nor writing. None of the arts pay well (unless you are famous or corrupt), but we simply can't help ourselves. Teachers are artists, in spite of politicians trying to convince everyone that teaching is simply a science. It isn't
simply any one thing. Teachers finesse our lessons in the middle of class - we can't simply abandon the experiment and begin again. We have to peer into the faces, the minds, the hearts of each child and try to understand what they need from us. We look at a block of flawed marble and try to free the sculpture inside. As an artist works an accidental smudge into the painting, so we teachers work to create a masterpiece in each child, no matter what smudges, chips, and even disasters come our way.
That's the heaven and the hell of it, I suppose. I am a teacher because, ultimately, I don't have any choice. I have to be here. Year after year, even when I am tired, grouchy, or sad. My students need me - even on the days when I don't believe it and neither do they. And, I need them. I need my kids. They keep me honest by the way they look at me any time I don't keep my word. They keep me young with their music, their shoes, their love of video games. When I let them, they make me laugh. They give me hope. When I see someone stop in the hall and help a stranger pick up their dropped pencils. When they thank me for handing them a test. When the expression of their face brightens because they finally understand prepositions. Maybe teaching is a calling because we get the opportunity to see God in the face of each child we teach; and we, in turn, offer them love and support as the hands of hearts of God each day.
