Every November on my personal blog, I take each day and find something to be grateful for, and I write about it. Some days are harder than others to find things to be grateful for (yesterday’s post was gratitude for the price of my contacts finally being semi-reasonable) and this week has been especially difficult for a variety of reasons.
Teaching is hard. It’s heartbreaking and stressful and yesterday while I taught piano lessons, the sum of all my failures as a teacher crushed me. I did not have a very pleasant evening.
This morning, I got to school determined to look for good. When I opened my bottom desk drawer to find the early dismissal schedule (which, oddly enough, I am NOT grateful for), I saw this folder:
This folder stuffed with random notes students have left me over the past 14 years hasn’t been looked at in at least a year. Thank you notes, silly pictures, goodbye cards–tiny treasures of gratitude from hundreds of students that the packrat in me refused to dispose of.
Today, I’m grateful I still have them, and I’m grateful for the students who wrote and drew them. It’s a B12 shot in the arm reminding me why I really love my job:
My students.
