Writer's Workshop

One of the fabulous blogs that I read regularly called Mama Kat’s Losin It posts writers workshops. They’re prompts that give you something to think/write about. Usually they related to mommyhood/mommies and I’m never too sure what I would write about. However, I think I might give this a shot this week (and it even related to mommyhood…though not my own).




The prompt: Describe what makes you want to live a life with passion.



The response:



I’m not really sure if this will answer the question, but it got me thinking about my passions. One of them is teaching (I’m not currently in the classroom, but hopefully I’ll be back there sometime soon). Prior to my current job in education, I was a high school science teacher. Unlike most, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that I knew I wanted to teach. It just kind of happened. I had been teaching for a few years and felt like I was doing a good job at educating my students, but wasn’t sure if I was really “reaching” them (like all teachers hope they are). I related to them, we had fun, they learned…but would they remembering something that they had learned from me sometime down the road. One day at the end of the day, a secretary poked her head into my room about 5 minutes before the end of the school day. She said there was a young mom downstairs who wanted to talk to me and had been waiting downstairs for over a half hour for my class to be over. Could she come up? Of course!( I said).



At this point, I had already had several young moms come through my classroom and had seen many leave and not come back. I was trying to figure out who this could be, when she walked into my room with the most adorable little boy I had ever seen….and I couldn’t remember her name. Wow. Bad teacher. I did, however, remember the girl just nothing too specific. We visited and chatted about how life was, etc. and then she got to the point. She wanted to tell me personally that she had earned her GED and was starting nursing classes at a local college…all as a single mom. I was impressed, but had to ask her why she wanted to tell me…after all I hadn’t seen her in a few years. She said, “Don’t you remember Miss B.? You told me that I had a good head on my shoulders and that I couldn’t let it go to waste.” In retrospect, that is verbatim what I probably said to her one day when she hadn’t done her homework. Not in relation to her current situation.



It was at that point that I realized that my work really does have an impact on other people. I realized that the little encouragements and praise that people give to each other really stick with someone. I also realized that you never know what people need to hear. Now, I’m not perfect, but after that I tried really hard to take time for each of my students personally. Sure, there are times where I wanted to whack them upside the head (but I would have gotten fired for that) and there were times when I had to say things that the kids didn’t want to hear, but I’d like to think that I helped out at least one other person along the way.



My passion is people, not just teaching. Don’t forget that what you say really can make a difference.



Whew….long winded and deep….I’ll try to find something funny to post tomorrow.