"Little Victories" - Matt Nathanson

Teaching is tough. It's a largely thankless job, underpaid and unappreciated. Good teachers put their heart and soul into it and are lucky if they can keep the class under control long enough to leak something into those kids' heads. For every success it feels like there are ten thousand failures, and for every kid whose life changes for your efforts there are a hundred who probably won't remember they ever took your class, except to complain about it.

I want to forget, just for a minute, about the hundred kids who wouldn't notice if I stopped talking about electrons and started talking about bunnies. I want to talk about that one kid. He sits by the window in my first block class. He's not my best student, not by a long shot, but he's a good kid. And for some reason, he absolutely loves my class. Loves it.

He's genuine, and I like that. He's interested in science and eager to learn whatever he can. So much so that sometimes, when the rest of the class is getting too loud, he'll say, "Hey guys, shut up, I want to hear this" or "Everyone be quiet, this is cool." The other kids call him teacher's pet, but he doesn't seem to mind. And anyway, I can spot the real suck-ups a mile away, and he's not one of them. He just loves science.

Yesterday I was trying to explain a lab we had just done, and for the most part my efforts were being met with blank, glassy stares that silently screamed "Don't you realize it's 8:00am and I want to be in bed?" But not from him. He was as animated as I have ever seen him, and for a while there it seemed like it was just him and me in the classroom, chatting about physics. But you know, I didn't really mind. I've finally accepted that I'm not going to awaken a closet physicist in each of my students. In fact, most of my kids hate science and always have. And that's okay, they'll go on to study English or history or whatever it is that moves them. But I'm going to go right on teaching like it's going to make a difference because, for at least one kid, it has.

As class was ending I turned to him and just thanked him. And you know what he said to me? "No, I should be thanking you. Until this class, I didn't know I liked science. Now I know where I belong."

And that right there, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am a teacher.