The movie, Groundhog Day, has become synonymous with feeling like you are repeating the same experience again and again and again. Teachers are in a continuous loop of the first day of school with all of its jitters, excitement, and anxiety every August or September. The only difference is that if it has been a bad year, you are given a fresh start the following year. I will be starting my twenty-fourth year as an eighth-grade teacher. Somehow, it still feels like it’s my very first. There are many rewards and, of course, challenges to being a teacher in 2022.

One reward is that I get to indulge in one of my favorite activities: reading. It is no secret I have a genuine passion for reading. However, the pandemic of 2020 seems to have ‘broken’ something inside of me. I would read over a dozen books every summer to be sure I had many fresh titles to recommend to my students the following school year. But then the pandemic occurred, a time when one would think someone like me would find ample time to lose myself in book after book. My brain wouldn’t stay focused or interested long enough to finish any story. The silence that filled my brain was deafening. I found myself turning to puzzles or games instead of books, enlightened to what some of my students who “don’t like to read” feel like. Fortunately, the classroom demands my attention, and I can find those pages again. 

Another positive side effect of being a teacher is I smile daily. It’s true. I have a twenty-five-minute drive to work. I use this time to pray. What I say, how I react, and what I do is heard or seen by someone. I try hard to be sure that I say something that maybe just one person needed to hear that day, that I demonstrate kindness and forgiveness, and that each person who walks in my room feels seen and heard. It is so easy to get drug down by stress and negativity in a workplace. Somehow, wherever there are people, there is some form of drama, gossip, or bitterness. Any or all of this poisons the air around you, making the environment toxic. Several years ago, I decided that I would not participate in these behaviors but try to be positive every day. After all, I, too, am a person and am just as likely to be the source of the problem. I’m not always successful, but I try and, in so doing, have been a much better person. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention perhaps the one benefit I am least likely ever to see: I get to shape our future. That is such a cliche thing to say. But think about the roles that teachers play in our children’s lives. I am with a student one hundred and eighty days a year for a minimum of one hour a day. During this time, I talk one-on-one with them, I read their personal thoughts or quirky dreams, I watch them interact with their peers, and I see them eat. As if that isn’t an experience all of its own! Speaking as a parent, I know that when I get home, I have to cook dinner, get a load of laundry done, and clean up the house. I expected my children to work on their homework after practice, a game, a lesson, or an appointment. In other words, even when I was “with” my children, our moments of sitting down and talking were treasured because they didn’t get to happen all the time. Life gets busy, and today our kids have redefined the word busy! I have a job where I get to spend time with someone else’s child, and I don’t take that honor lightly.  

Being a teacher isn’t just reading, smiling, and chatting with kids all day long. The trick is to do those things while satisfying all of the academic requirements we need to meet each year, and there are a lot of academic requirements we need to meet each year. The trick is to do those things even when you know some of our kids are going through horrible things. The trick is to do those things even when it is the last thing you want to do because of your personal challenges. Teaching is a calling and is done well by those who love it. I would much rather be stuck in the repetition of the first day of school than that dream I have where I’ve forgotten to go to class all year, and I walk in for the final.