The past couple of weeks have been busy with meetings, appointments, homework and work work. By the way if I haven’t said in a previous post, I’m a graduate student working on my specialist degree in Educational Leadership. I will be finished in August and can’t wait.
These last couple of weeks have been taxing to say the least.
I was listening to a video for one of my graduate courses and it was to say the least empowering. The video is from speaker Dr. Jeff Duncan Andrade. In the class we just finished discussing how our students are human capital.
As I watched the video of Dr. Andrade’s presentation, I could not help but think of the student who died a couple of weeks ago. He was murdered. His funeral was this past Friday and many of my students did attend. This was not the first time I had a student die during my tenure at Lake Taylor High. I could not help but to think what our students face outside of school. They are under lots of stress. Some mornings while on bus duty, I overhear conversations about neighborhood fights and shootings and and that their father, brother, sister, mother, or someone close to them have been affected. Students need a caring adult to help “navigate through this toxic stress.”
This video has reminded me of why I became a teacher in the first place. I wanted to make a difference and let students know they can decide their future. I want to provide students Hope! They can be whoever they want to be.
Even after they leave high school, I have students contacting me and coming up to the school to thank me for being there for them. Frankly, I was shocked that a couple of the students thanked me because if you saw them in high school and asked them about me, they probably would have responded “Mrs. Porter is mean, she is hard on me.” (Maybe they would have used some other adjectives but you get the point).
I think this video should be viewed to those teachers who are about to give up. It may have them recall why they started in this profession.
No comments:
Post a Comment