Sacrifices

A teacher often has to sacrifice a lot of things. Purchasing supplies from your own paycheck, staying after school to tutor or run a student organization, attending events students participate in, spending time at home preparing for instruction instead of maximizing quality time with family, are all just a few items on the list that most teachers give up. In my first year, I have experienced many of those however the sacrifice I recently have made has made all the world of difference. I sacrificed my planning period (i have two) to provide one on one instruction to one of the lowest kids in the school in mathematics and science. We are literally starting at the beginning with one-step addition. This sacrifice has been worth it and it has only been two days. In these two days, I have created an engaged math student. I taught the dot system that is often used in the elementary school for adding and taught him how to use the dots to add so that he doesn't have to use his fingers. At his age, it is embarrassing to have people see you use your fingers to count. Now, he has adopted this method and uses it to solve problems. Today, I wrote problems on the board for him to solve later. Now in normal circumstances, my students would ignore anything I have on the board until I bring it up. However, I left the room for 30 seconds while he was finishing up his science assignment to see that he had taken it upon himself to start the problems on the board. I couldn't be more proud of him. This same student is the one who hates school, has no real life goals, and only has interest in Waka Flocka Flame, girls, and computers. He comes and gets down to work and tries to learn and master the things we are learning. While we have a far way to go, I am glad I gave up my time in order to help make sure that he could start finding an interest in his learning. He currently has an A in the material we have covered in which he respond "I have an A..that go hard in the paint like Flocka said huh" lol.