It's the little things that make a difference

I absolutely love teaching!

I honestly can't think of anything I would rather be doing.  Well... outside of the house, anyway. 

When I was in school, I always adored my teachers, and I was fortunate to have some truly great ones.  I have remained in contact with many of my teachers years later, and it was even my 5th grade teachers - and one of my all time heros - who officiated our wedding.

So recently, I was taken quite aback when I received this:

We've been working on improving students' paragraph writing, so for extra credit last semester, I asked students to write on a specific topic and diagram their paragraphs by highlighting topic sentences, circling transition words and so forth.

One of the topics was about a hero in their life whom they admire, and I came back as the subject of that particular paragraph. 

Wow.

And, I know it comes off looking like a brown-nosing ploy; but this was me as a student.  If I liked a teacher, I wasn't shy about letting them know it.  Not to mention, (as was also true of me in school) she didn't need the extra credit to begin with - she already had an A in my class. 

It's an honor, not because I think she truly views me as a hero (nor, let's be honest, am I worthy of that kind of praise).  I think that this was just her way of telling me that she really, really likes me.  And that is worth a lot, in my book!

I may never cure cancer; I may not be a great humanitarian or mean anything significant to the world.  Mostly, I think that raising my children will be my biggest contribution to this world, and I'm quite okay with that.  But it humbles and delights me to think that I might actually make a difference to a few people along the way. 

Let's face it: that's why I became a teacher to begin with.