Sep

21

Sometimes My Students Are My Most Compassionate Teachers.

Filed Under "At-risk" students, Dealing With Stress, The Way I See It 

There I sat at my desk with a cup of tea in my hand and dreading the next moment: the moment when the bell would ring, and my first class of rambunctious teenagers would tumble into my classroom. I felt really ill. This cold wasn’t getting better; it was getting worse. I just wanted to sit quietly in a darkened room sipping my cup of tea in quiet misery. Perfect, like that was going to happen.
It did not go well! I was sitting at a table with a group of students when I heard myself saying in a rather bitchy frustrated voice “What do you mean you don’t know how to do those trigonometry questions? We went over all that yesterday.” At that point one of my students, bless her, looked at me and said in a “joking” manner that she would like to give my chair( my chair is on wheels) a little shove so that it would go out the door, and I would be out of the room. At first, I was shocked when she said that. Imagine talking to me like that! Then when I thought about what she had said, I felt like thanking her. I wanted to thank her because she helped me realize that I needed to be at home in bed, not here at school being a b….. Not only did I not have the compassion for my students that I usually have, but I did not have any compassion for myself. I needed to be home in bed but didn’t realize it until my chair, with me in it, was “travelling” across the room.

Comments

One Response to “Sometimes My Students Are My Most Compassionate Teachers.”

  1. Alvin on September 22nd, 2006 12:09 am

    Hope you start feeling better soon :)

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