Let me never forget why I am here...

I never wanted to be a teacher, until the first time I stood in front of a class and suddenly felt like I was where I belonged.
I never wanted to teach high school, until I spent some of the best years of my life with the kids of CSA de La Pocatiere....
I didn't think I could handle elementary school, and yet now I think the transformation is complete.

Why do people become teachers? It's one part masochism, one part nice vacation time, and definitely one part of wanting to have an influence on the future. I can't even calculate how many kids I've taught over the past 9 years.... in as many different environments as one could imagine.

There are times when, as a teacher, I am ashamed of myself. I can yell at a kid (or a teen) until he or she cries. I have lied to get out of staying late at school. I have called in sick when I was in perfect health, but didn't feel like facing a group of sullen teens or hyperactive kids. I have photocopied stuff at the last minute, or assigned a "surprise in-class essay" when I didn't feel like committing myself to real teaching. On the other hand, I have also gotten myself to school at 7:00 am, or stayed until 9 pm to help kids. I have woken up at ungodly hours to get my photocopying done, or stayed up later than I should to finish off my corrections. I have felt joy at my students' achievements, and intense sadness at their passings (usually involving motor vehicles - they are teens, after all).

No matter where you are, teaching is a commitment that can either sap you of all your energy, or can make you feel like you are on top of the world.

Happily, today was an "on top of the world" day.... and I happened to bring my camera to school.

First off, I've been assigned a few (paid) extra classes that require me to be at school (awake, clean, dressed and chipper) by 8:00 am. I've decided to teach these grade 4 kids how to do cursive handwriting. This is quite a big deal to them. Every morning, I find them lined up at the door, ready to tackle the next few letters (we're progressing at about 5 letters a day). They are all enthralled with the idea of doing such pretty writing, and are the main reason that I can get myself out of bed when the sun is just rising.

I've seen kids come shining through in this class. These two girls are perfect examples of kids that I thought were hassles in regular class (neither one is sharpest lightbulb in the elevator), but these girls are simply amazing in the morning class (a factor that has spilled over into regular English class now too):


This boy is a sad case. He used to (purposely) get himself kicked out of class by acting out - spitting, pushing, hitting.... He wears the same ill-fitting clothes every day. His neck has streaks of dirt on it. I wanted so much for him to like me, to like my class, so that I could be nice to him - instead of kicking him out. For the past two mornings, he has been the first kid waiting for me at the door for morning class. He participates in class now and has even been smiling at me and speaking English in class (a few words here and there):

In his case, though, it wasn't the handwriting class that got his interest, but the "Animals Around the World" theme that I've been doing for most of November. My starting point was two-fold: I started off by modifying a presentation that Ty did for my grades 5 and 6 on African animals and a friend's high school lesson that presented all the continents. Over the month, continent by continent, I've introduced the grade 3 and 4 kids to toucans and wildebeests, chipmunks and sea turtles, ocelots and tamarins. I've taught them how to differentiate a leopard, a jaguar and a cheetah, that a kea is a damn smart bird, and that koalas are actually quite dangerous. They've listened to humpback whales sing and been shocked to discover that Japan is killing these beautiful giants of the sea (I have tried to narrow the focus to endangered/strange/excessively cute animals).

Other grades now are benefiting from the bulletin boards, full of 56 different species of animals from around the world. There is nothing cuter or more amazing than a wee Korean kid tapping a picture and saying "Bushbaby!" or "Canada Goose!".


Before embarking on this project, though. I had never really appreciated the amount of work that elementary teachers do. These kids don't just absorb information, they devour it! And you can't just assign them a 500-word essay to keep them occupied! What I've done is a drop in the bucket compared to what my aunt, or my friend Joanna, or any of the teachers I've had in the K-6 zone have done over the years.

I just hope that these kids will retain some small part of it... and one day, when perhaps they hear that the last tiger has been seen, or that the polar bears have finally succumbed to the melting of the icecaps, they might remember having heard about it somewhere before.