My Best Day

It is really difficult to choose a “best” day in this field. Everyday has its ups
and downs--and some days there are more downs than ups. Even still, the
best days are those when you see a light bulb go off above a student’s head
when it *finally* clicks, or the days when your students are in a particularly
good moods and can make you laugh all day long. I’ve had some really great
laughs with my students throughout the years, like, pee-your-pants laughs,
and those are especially cherishable.

However, one of my Best Days in Education has to be when a former student
of mine, Danielle we’ll call her, came back to visit me after she had graduated
and gone away to college. I had her as a Spanish AP student a few years prior.
Not only had she gone to college, but she chose to study abroad in
Madrid, Spain (where I also studied abroad) and told me that she was inspired
by me to become bilingual! As you can imagine, this is every World Language
teacher’s dream, especially when you teach in the Midwest with minimal
Spanish cultural resources or native speakers in the area-we’re kind of battling
against the odds. Danielle told me of her studies, her au pair family, the sights
she saw while in Europe, and the FOOD, oh my gosh the food. The whole time
I just smiled and hung on to her every word, reminiscing and reliving my abroad
days through her, in a way. My heart was so full of gratitude and pride and
happiness for her.

We spend countless hours planning engaging lessons, stay late to finish grading
tests, deal with difficult behaviors, and all of it is completely worth it--makes
you tear up, even--when a student grows up, gains wisdom that only time and
experience can offer, and comes back to say ‘thank you’ to YOU.

My. Best. Day.

Melinda King