Through a Teacher's Eyes

I became a teacher because I had a teacher--a really great teacher! She came along at exactly the time that I had no idea who or what I was to become, and a nasty high school environment had managed to rebuff my edginess and my originality. She celebrated me! She got me! In her eyes, I was beautiful, not awkward, not too tall, and not too red-haired and freckled. I was brilliant, even though my grade point average reported nothing to write home about...and I wasn't in the Latin IV class, or in Honors English Literature with all the girls who were Eastern girl school bound. She appreciated my creativity and my iconoclastic humor, and in doing so, she persuaded me to see myself in a light that was certainly more positive.

Years later, one of my best and most-loved students spoke at the graduation exercises at the high school where I had been teaching for seven years. She said that the main thing about me, as a teacher, was that I helped students to see themselves not as they were, but as they could be. I helped them see themselves through my eyes--my adoring eyes. Jayne was right--I did adore them...they were emotionally open, sassy, opinionated, brilliant, silly, serious, faithful and true. And they needed me to love them. And I did. And I do.