Chasing Orchid: A Light Bulb Moment…For the Teacher

Even a teacher is always learning! Remember, you can touch a person's life by being yourself and not even realize it. Hope you enjoy. ~Orchid

I walked into a mess from the moment I got into work this morning. Turns out one of my students, who is on my case load, plagiarized her senior paper. This isn’t the first incident with her, she was warned the first time and given a chance to edit her paper and turn it back in. Apparently she did the same thing. Because of this she will fail the class for the semester and not graduate. The senior paper is a requirement to graduate. Without it, she will have to take the class again.

So I walked into the office to clock in for the day and was immediately faced with her teacher, he wanted me to set up a meeting with all the appropriate people to discuss this student’s options. Needless to say, I spent hours on the phone arranging everything and barely had a moment to breathe. Not only did I talk to everyone, the student also came into my room crying her eyes out. More clean-up/comfort duty for me!

Now I don’t mind this, except for the fact that Christmas break is literally 2 and a half days away. My regular students have been a royal pain in the ass and not one of them is in a learning mood. On top of which they are all scrambling to finish make-up work so they can pass the quarter. This means that I have no free periods at all because all my students are constantly coming in for help. Can we say revolving door? Needless to say it’s been quite a chaotic week.

As a general rule, I haven’t had the best experience teaching. My kids are pretty unruly, part of it comes with the special education territory, the other part comes from their complacency. They are used to sliding by in their classes because they are “special ed.” They have actually used this as an excuse, I constantly hear “Miss, why do we have to do this work, we’re special ed after all?”

But, just when I thought all hope was lost, I happened upon a light bulb moment. Now usually when teachers talk about a light bulb moment, they are speaking of the students they teach. Today, however, it happened to the teacher.

I have one student, a class clown, who has had a lot of obstacles to overcome in the last couple months. He was leaving today to start Christmas break early. Instead of going to his classes, he kept popping up in mine. He had an obvious need to be around someone he felt comfortable with. There are extenuating circumstances surrounding this child and so all of his teachers have been cutting him some slack, hence why he was able to spend the day with me.

While being his usual silly self, there was a serious tinge to him today. As exasperating as my day had been, the last thing I wanted to deal with was him disrupting my classes. However, I took a deep breath and managed to remain calm. Around lunchtime, just when I had reached the end of my rope and was about to kick him out of my classroom, he turned around and asked me a serious question.

“Miss, how many kids do you have?

I looked at him, because he already knows, and simply said “One.”

“No,” he said, “How many kids do you have here.”

“Oh…hmm about 55 or so…why?”

He was silent for a minute and then turned to me and said, “So you have 56 kids in all, do you want to know how I came up with that number?”

I was a bit puzzled as I told him to explain.

He said, “Well, you come to school everyday to see us…right?”

“Right.”

“Well, then” he stated very matter of factly, “You have 56 kids total, including your daughter.”

We joked for a few more minutes and then he left to go get lunch. After he left, I sat there and thought about what he had said. For a young man who is always fooling around, his statement rang very true. But for him to note and actually say that to me, meant the world.

I always said, if I touch one student’s life it would be enough. *smiles* I guess I can count him as my first, but hopefully not my last.