Teaching Does Have An Impact

I never really thought that as a substitute I would have any sort of lasting impact on my students. I mean, I called them my kids, often took them snacks, helped them out with their work, put up with their antics, often got into arguments with them, and even on occasion cried b/c of them...but I never thought I would get through.

Today, I realized I did get through. It made me smile and laugh. How? Well, since you asked so nicely, I shall let you know. Comfy? Here we go.

I went into town to the only cafe there to get lunch for myself and my mom. I thought I'd do something nice for her that she wasn't expecting. As I was leaving, a car pulled up beside me and these boys started yelling my name. I looked up, and there sitting in that car were 4 smiling faces, 3 of which were former students of mine. They had gotten out of school early b/c of final exams, and were no doubtedly on there way to find some type of trouble to get into. Having taught the majority of them, I can say that they most likely found it not to far from where we were conversing.

Even though it was a short conversation, we laughed, said how we were doing, and how they were happy to see me. One even made a point to remind me of his name just in case I'd forgotten it. I had to gently remind them that they were holding up traffic. Not that the boy in the big truck behind them couldn't have turned up the little street by the grocery store right by the cafe, but still, they were in the middle of the street. There response was they didn't care and would love to sit there all day if only to make a point. Like I said, these boys were former students of mine. Trouble should have been their middle names or at least written on their underwear.

While these boys may have gotten into trouble at school and ended up with me at the alternative school, they were still my kids. I'll see them around town. They'll probably find out where my parents live and drive by in hopes of embarrassing me.

But after today, I knew that if I hadn't been the type to care and had just been an overall bitch and hateful person to those boys, then they would have passed by without saying a word. Instead, they stopped to say hello. I guess southern manners haven't died out after all.