These Are Days That Keep You Going

Sometimes you get immediate feedback that is discouraging.  OK, a lot of the time if you are in a creative field.  You learn to deal and take the positive out of it.

Teaching can be the same way.  Tonight was the final for my class at NWACC. It had been an interesting mix, and some weeks, I felt like my own "troubles" - and that is a bad word choice, but the only thing to come to mind when you are battling against tough work demands and challenges - sometimes made my performance in class not as inspiring, fresh or organized as I wanted.

When a class does bad on a test, I take it personally.  Sure, some of them just don't study, or have given the amount of effort they need to get the less than outstanding grade they want.  (I have always been most frustrated when people settle - whether in class or elsewhere.)

So tonight's final was touching.  Sally Field touching when one student after another came up to thank me for the class.  Three wrote letters or notes after their essays about how they had hated history in the past, but thanks to this class, they were reconsidering that.

I'm not writing this to brag.  I'm writing it to thank them.  Each semester I come to this class wanting to change students view of how history is important to every one of them.  Important to this nation.  That the past is important to the future.  And when I can have a year like this, where they respond and they get it - you know, it really isn't about the teacher (or the coach) - it is about the students.  If they get it, you did your job.

Might add, not all these kids were the A students.  In fact, a couple of them were genuinely struggling.  But they stayed with it, they made progress, they improved.

And as much as you all in HIST 2013-11 say you enjoyed the class, I enjoyed that from all of you. 

Thank you for making my semester.