Unexpected Visit

Into my fourth year of teaching, it dawned on me, with the help of my teaching aide, that I should "journal" inspiring teaching moments. So this is the start of my blogging concerning my teaching career.

It all started this morning when I walked into the building shivering, head down, trying to block the chill and trap the heat, when suddenly I noticed someone sitting outside my locked door...an unknown yet somehow familiar face. "Don't you remember me?" quickly turned my "another Monday..." face into a beaming smile. "Manuel! Wow, how are you?!" Now you would think that after only 3 and a half years of teaching, I'd easily be able to place this child, but I couldn't place him in the correct year, not for sure, at least. After some quick and simple math skills ("I'm almost 18"), I placed him in my first year of teaching, a year I most certainly would rather forget most days--not because of the students, persay, but more because of the hellish experience of getting through it. Not an experience I'm fond of revisiting. But it's those students who make it all worthwhile, even in the toughest years where it felt like I accomplished nothing but merely survival.

So let's start with Manuel...a good-hearted, friendly and likeable kid that lacked motivation and drive. Throughout that year, I felt as though I did everything possible to get the kids involved, to make them "want to learn". (So obviously this was before the time I figured out that some kids just don't want the same thing I want for them. To me that used to be unfathomable, but now I know better.) It pained me everyday to have to face those students that didn't act like they cared. Manuel was a sweet kid, never gave me a behavior problem. Good natured, but struggled to pass due to lack of effort outside class. So today he tells me what's he's been up to the past few years...been back to Mexico for a year, out on his own at 16, involved in a gang and almost killed, etc, etc. Wow. I probably shouldn't have been shocked, because deep down inside when this adorable 14-year-old boy sat in my beginning ESL class, I feared exactly what I heard him saying to me this morning. "I'm on the right track now, Miss Marzuola...and you know why I'm here?" No, Manuel, I don't because I never felt like I ever got anything through to you. "I'm here because you're special. You're one of those special people in my life that I can never forget, and I want you to know that."

Really? I wanted to cry. So this boy who I felt didn't get anything from my 2 classes everyday four years ago, now tells me that he can never forget me...that he looked me up 2 years ago and found my number to call me, but had to go back to Mexico for a year and lost my number, has just returned from Mexico and wanted to come find me? It's those kids that remind me of why God has put me where he has, even in troubled years, even with troubled kids. I know I can't touch them all, and that's what makes it such a heartwrenching job. But what I realized today is that whether or not a student gets what I want him to academically is not what is always most important. Sometimes he just needs someone to show he/she cares, and whether they realize it at the time or not is not always important, but that they realize it someday is what matters. Thank you, Manuel, for that realization. In such a tough year as it's been for me this year, it's exactly what I needed.