"It's an almost psychotic feeling, believing that part of their lives belongs to me. Everything they become, I also become. And everything about me, they helped to create."
At the beginning of the year when my sixth graders first walked in, I saw them as precious "apples"... and on my door I put their names on apples surrounding a big apple that says "the apples of my eye". I explained this idiom to them when we first met as we talked about how exciting the year would be and how much they would learn and grow. I wanted them to know they were MY apples and didn't want them to be scared, this was their classroom, too.
This door display has stayed up all year long.. yet, as the year went on, my apples began to get bruised spots on them as I started to get frustrated with their drama and behavior issues. I would close the door behind us while going to lunch and remember, they were still the apples of my eye.
Even after I got saved to Jesus Christ, I couldn't help but have no idea what to do with these now "rotten" acting students of mine. My apples were rotting and I was gauging my eyes out!! Teaching sixth grade is a lot harder than it even sounds... not only are you teaching more complex/challenging content, but the DRAMA that gets in the way of this is just as much. And even still, I would close the door behind them on our way to lunch (wanting to go back inside and lock the door behind me!) and remember: these precious kids are still the apples of my eye. My first class. As my roommate had said, "they can be brats, but they're MY brats!"
I have to say that if I didn't live my life for Jesus, going in to work that became more and more challenging with the mind set that I was serving him, I don't know if I could have made it. My rotten little apples were testing me, and there were times in my mind where I wanted to call home and BEG to go back. ("Isn't there any way I could just live at home and go back to being bored out of my mind with a part time job?"... I had too much pride... and faith, to do that).
That brings us to today. This last quarter I have realized that these kids need me and I have been their teacher, even if only to teach them how to ask each other NICELY for someone to give them their pencil back... and things like that! I know that some of my apples have a lot of crazy things going on back home and the last thing they need is a chaotic classroom where the teacher doesn't have any control. They needed structure and discipline, and they've gotten a whole basket full and more this last half of the year. Now, my apples are being polished and shiny new again. They are learning that they need discipline in their lives, and I've learned that I have to be the one to give it to them. We have all learned that being disciplined doesn't mean getting in trouble... it means knowing what to do and how to act even when someone's not watching/telling you. I needed to learn this for my students, and now we are a much happier bunch... (can you tell that we have been studying idioms/figurative language..?)
Today, with my reading students, we read a poem called "Seeds". I didn't realize how absolutely perfect this poem was for my students (I had just discovered it in a pile left behind by the previous teacher in my classroom!). We read it and it talked about how the child "ate" the words that his parent spoke, and became those words (by speaking them and living by them). At the end it says "For better or worse, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree". We talked about how this meant the child is like their parent, because even when they grow up and "fall off the tree" you can still tell where they came from. ... this is where it gets sweet. My kids have accidentally been calling me "mom" a lot lately, and one of them said that as they go off to middle school next year, anyone would be able to tell they were my students because of the words I gave them.
My first very own students ARE and always will be the apples of my eye. (even though I cannot, as many have requested, follow them to seventh grade!) When we went outside after class, I told them they had to stay near their apple tree (aka, me!). Some of my closest apples came running right up to me and held on tight, some of the free-spirited apples took out a ball and ran around me... and I couldn't help but wonder as one of my apples (one that reminds me of me as a kid) walked beside me to the cross walk: will people really be able to tell my students apart from the rest? But I guess it doesn't matter as long as they always remember what tree they come from!
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