Paying it forward

 `I touch the future I teach` Christa McAuliffe 

Two weeks ago I called in sick to work. I hadn´t been sleeping much, had already cried twice that week, and the idea of having to go into work gave me actual anxiety. I stayed home for two days, and spent most of the first day in my bed. The second day I got up, went for a swim and then I made quite an impromptu stop. 

I´m sure I´ve mentioned this before, but when I was eleven I had a mentor, let's call him Tim, who was (to quote Mary Poppins) 'practically perfect in every way'. Aside from the fact he taught math ofcourse, but I promised to never hold that against him. It will come as no suprise to some of you that I was a loudmouthed, sarcastic kid, even at the tender age of eleven. I masked my insecurities by being the loudest person in the room and I faked confidence every single day. Life at home wasn't always fun, I think it never really is for a lot of teenagers, and so I would often hang out at school after class was over. Tim was a great teacher who, despite being busy as hell, always seemed to have time for all of his students. He treated us with respect, understanding and empathy and never made us feel like we were whiny teenagers who needed to get over themselves (even if this was the case :P). I decided I wanted to be a teacher when I was fourteen, and Tim was the very reason I chose to do so. Ofcourse, he never told me about all the extra things that come with being a teacher, but rest assured I definitely yelled at him for that. 

Back to my impromptu stop, which and I guess I kind of gave it away with all the exposition earlier, was actually a stop at the school Tim still works at. A stop I made because, after seven years of teaching I don't always feel the same passion I did before. I'm more sarcastic, more cynical, more pessimistic than I ever was. I cry a lot, and I constantly wonder to myself whether I can justify being a part of an educational system I feel is completely detrimental to our kids' wellbeing. Does the 'difference' I can make as an individual teacher outweigh the 'damage' of the system I belong to? So, I went to see Tim, who has been teaching for over fourty years and therefore surely must have wondered this himself. I spent a little over two hours there, mostly observing him teach (which is always a blast because our teaching styles could not be more different) but also talking about all the things that bothered me. And although I never outright asked him the question on my mind, the visit in itself still provided me with an answer. Because here I was, nineteen years after the fact, going back to the one person that impacted the very core of my life. I was eleven when I first met him and I am thirty years old now, and when I hit one of my lowest points...I went and sought out my highschool teacher. If that doesn't answer the question of whether the difference a teacher can make outweighs the disadvantages of the educational system, I don't know what does. It's easy to lose sight of though, this realisation that we, as teachers, truly do make a difference. It's too easy to forget about all the good we can do when  faced with all the bad. 

What can we take away from these incoherent ramblings of mine? Well, first things first: teaching is hard and being a teacher is harder. Secondly, it's scarily easy to lose sight of the impact teachers can have on their students, and even if we do notice, we have a tendency to downplay it. The key, I guess, is to remind yourself again and again of the teachers that made the difference for you. Because, truth is, every current teacher has one of those: a teacher that made a difference. So, whenever you doubt the difference you are making, whenever the job becomes too much and you don't know if it is worth it, think about the difference your teachers made for you. And then pay it forward.