Starting a New School Year

The first day of the 2017-2018 school year was this past Friday for my school district. Thursday evening, after meet the teacher, I was chatting with my Mom, super exited to be starting a new school year. I made the comment at the end of our conversation that I wouldn’t be near as excited after the first day. Sounds odd doesn’t it. That’s when it hit me, teaching is a lot like childbirth.

Teaching & Childbirth

Expectant moms spend nine months anticipating and planning for the arrival of the new life growing inside them. Teachers spend the summer anticipating and planning for the new students arriving with the start of a new school year.

Then comes the dreaded labor. Awful and painful as it may be that pain brings great things, new life and the greatest of joys. For teachers the equivalent of labor is the first few weeks of school. Training, guiding and encouraging three and four year olds into pre-k life. It’s painful some days and exhausting every day! Like the laboring mom the teacher wonders if it was this hard last time. How did they make it through? Was the outcome worth the pain and effort?

Oh, Yes!

The answer is yes, absolutely, I’d do it again in nine months.

Nothing worth doing is easy. For teachers our job changes drastically and unpredictably from one year to the next. Students change, policies change, teaching teams change, leadership changes and standards seem to be an ever moving target.

If this is the case why teach? Why do we do it? Why do we stay? Why?

200 Reasons

I can give you 200 plus reasons from the last ten years. They come in multiple forms, colors and backgrounds, with different strengths and challenges.

They start out as tiny little monkeys that are all over the place. They want to do everything all at once but nothing for too long. Some know all the letters while others can barely write their names. Some know how to follow instructions while others want to set the instructions.

As teachers we take all these differences and channel them into amazing amounts of learning. We go from having a classroom of monkeys all working for themselves to having a team of geese all using their strengths to guide the team to new heights. Flying together toward a common goal – to be better than we were and know more than we thought possible.

So why do we teach? Because of the children. They are the reason. They will always be the reason.

Like the laboring mom we quickly forget how hard the beginning of the year is because we are focusing on the end result. A beautiful new life.