Day Four: What do you love the most about teaching?
There are so many things to love about teaching English. When I get to talk about a story and see something I never saw before because a fifteen-year-old's mind is so different from mine, when I get to watch adolescents respond to each other's writing with maturity and grace, when I get to belly laugh between classes at one-upping of Chuck Norris jokes by teenage boys, it is difficult to believe that I actually get paid to do this.
But my very favorite is a brand new start every year.
There are few images as powerful as a blank slate, and this is what I receive every single August. All the mistakes of the prior year vanish, and the problems become solvable again. Without tangible faces in front of me, my summer planning and dreaming allows me to shoot high and imagine new possibilities. And then it all becomes real and concrete again with new humans in chairs, who haven't made up their minds yet about how this is all going to go. Since I haven't either, the fresh feeling is thick in the room.
New Augusts are my favorite.
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