Things I Have Taken With Me

Students, noise, discipline, quotes. This was my life a year ago, adjusting and transitioning to working at an after school program/summer camp and saying farewell to life as a college student. I had to learn quickly how to lead a classroom full of 5th graders, and literally switch my thinking from student to teacher. It was an exciting adjustment, but it was a challenging and exhausting one as well. I was happy to be busy working and be around various people and students, and see where my life was headed next come post grad. On my graduation day there were tears of joy and relief due to all the struggle and deep suffering bottled up for 3 years.

A year later, I am teaching students but I don't have to keep relearning their names. I have the privilege of learning about them on a more individual and personal basis, and I get to decide what will brought to the lessons and what will be learned. While I was in that crowded, noisy classroom a year ago, to keep me inspired and sane, I wrote a quote on the board each day. This quote was by someone famous or well known and if my students didn't know who the person was or what they were known for, I would tell them. I would also give them points for participating and telling what the quote meant to them. Some of the authors of the quotes included, Julia Child, Marcus Sameulsson, Albert Einstein, Indira Gandhi, Walt Disney, Elon Musk, Mahatma Gandhi, Matthew Youlden, Eleanor Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln among others. After many academic quarters at University of thinking to myself and learning solo, I had a burst of knowledge and inspiration to share with my students.

There are some things that I have taken from that special, delicate, challenging, enriching, busy and growing experience that were seeped in those walls, and in the loud and quiet voices of my former students. I took with me the power of fortitude, knowing myself and knowing when enough is enough. I took with me a white board that has carried over with me in my lessons now. I have taken with me inspiration, new ideas and a closer look into the classroom. I have taken with me memories of those hot summer days, the lining up, the role playing of teacher and juggling various things at once, the kind words and gestures from my students, the very hard, annoying and exhausting days that made me burn not so much from the heat but from the grind of the work. I breathe a sigh of relief that I made it through a year of post grad, and the experiences of last summer and that I'm in another place because I was there first.