Who Run the World? Teachers!

For all my teacher friends out there, we are almost there and happy teacher appreciation week!! I'm so glad that teacher appreciation week falls when it does because we need this pick up! Hello...state testing. Plus our kids know it is summer, they are ready. If they weren't squirmy wormy to begin with, they sure are now!

For almost all of my life, I have wanted to be a teacher.I would come home and line up my stuffed animals on my bed and teach them what I had learned at school that day. It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized that I want to be a music teacher, and then in college I fully realized that I wanted to be a middle school choir teacher. I have been teaching for four years now, and even though I have not done this a very long this is by the far the best and hardest thing that I have ever done. We are living in a time were everything that a teacher does is under the world's largest microscope. We are faced with polices and procedures that may very well change within the first five minutes of the announcement of the new procedure. The enormous weight that we have to carrying can be both unbearable and very under appreciated. Each kid is different, and because each kid is different what works for one won't work for the other. We are pulled in nine million directions each and everyday, but what is the most important thing is are we doing what will be the best for kids? And you know what, doing what is best for kids is hard sometimes. Really hard. Sometimes it means waking up at 2 in the morning to take kids to Branson for a day they would never forget. Sometimes it is spending your own money to buy uniforms for students that can't afford it. Sometimes it means not moving on in a section of music because your kids don't get it, even though you don't have time do it. Sometimes it means laying in your bed at night in tears over the kid that you just so desperately what to reach, but you know that it isn't going to happen. 

Each day in teaching is a new and different journey. I'm so thankful for the host of educators that have been involved in my journey. So for the teachers at Euper Lane Elementary, Southside Elementary, Cook Elementary, Ballman Elementary, Ramsey Junior High, Southside High School, and Oklahoma Baptist University that poured into me thank you. For my elementary, middle school, and high school music teachers, thank you for showing me your love of music and lighting the fire in me. For my college professors and advisers, there are no words for how thankful I am for you. Thank you for teaching me how to be a teacher. Thank you making sure I never gave up, for loving me when it was hard, and for making me a better person. For the educators at Sequoyah Middle School, thank you for inspiring me daily. The things you do in your classrooms for our students is amazing! You are all fabulous people and I love our educator family. For all the music teachers that I work with in my area and across the state of Oklahoma, you are all the best! Oklahoma is blessed to have music educators like you!!

TLEs, OAMs, SOOs, SLOs, VAMs and any other three letter acronyms will never determine the amount of goodness that we do everyday, Those letters will never define you as a teacher, they will never show the impact that you leave on kids everyday. An increasingly out of touch state legislature will never be able to understand how wonderful each and everyone of you are! You inspire me, you make me better. 

Teaching is hard. But oh man it is just so good. So teachers don't ever forget how awesome you are, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. That light is the sun. The sun is over a pool. And there is frozen lemonade and Josh's Sno Cones!!