The Best Day Ever....

      As with the other teachers who have already posted here, I also find it difficult to claim that one day has been the best.  Usually the best days, somehow involve the success stories  of your students, however, there have been so many times when I felt elated to be a teacher just because I was able to watch my students learning and putting the pieces together.  To me the best part of teaching is feeling like you have had a positive impact on your students’ lives. 

     Having taught kindergarten for 15 years, and then switching to high school to teach business and computer science classes, I have had a variety of different experiences.  I have so many wonderful memories of my kindergarten students.  I felt it was a privilege to work with such young children and help mold their minds.  They were at such a sweet age where they still loved school and were eager to learn.   It was always fun to watch them as they learned something new and to see the excitement they possessed in their learning.  In kindergarten, I know I always felt so proud when I did the spring assessments on my students and was able to measure how far they had come with their literacy and math skills.  It was always a very exciting time when I felt so proud of all of them and recognized them for how far they had come and how hard they had worked.  They always felt proud of themselves too and that warmed my heart as their teacher.

     Now that I am in high school I experience different kind of triumphs.  I still have students with whom I can celebrate their successes and how hard they have worked.  Having conversations with my students about what colleges they would like to attend and then being able to congratulate them once they have received their acceptance letters is always rewarding.  Again, to pinpoint one day is difficult, but I will reflect on a recent experience I had with one of my freshman students.  

One of the classes I teach is Foundations of Computer Science.  In this class students learn a lot about how computers work, how they are networked, the importance of safety on the internet, and they learn how to do basic programming using HTML (the language web pages are written in) and Scratch (a basic drag and drop language).  We were nearing the end of our HTML unit and the students had just had to create a multi-page website on a topic of their choice.   This student had expressed to me a few days earlier how much she was enjoying our unit. Several days later she came up to me after class and again expressed how much she was enjoying coding and creating web pages and she told me due to the learning and experiences she was having in my class,  she felt she would like to pursue her degree in Computer Science.  That was my best day this year because she was so enthusiastic about what she was doing and felt passionately about her choice.  We had a great conversation about her opportunities and interests.  It all goes back to having that positive impact on your students.  I felt good because I did have a positive impact on her life and she was excited about her decision.    

     Was it the best day of my teaching career?  I can’t say for certain, but it would definitely rank up there in the top ten!

Michelle B.