I had the oddest experience the other day.  I was walking from my office to my next class and passed the open door of a fourth grade classroom.  I saw a room full of children busily engaged in a task and their teacher leaning over a student’s desk offering words of encouragement.  As I hurried to meet my students, I was filled with a sense of love for this woman who was a stranger to me–my heart actually “swelled” like it used to when I would check on my sleeping children.

I have spent most of my life in schools–for me it was like one of those bad romantic comedies where two people start out hating each other, then the relationship turns into the love of their lives.  As a kid, I hated school; as a teacher, it morphed into a 30-year love affair.  Throughout my career, I have known teachers who I admire and tried to emulate, but other than a few close friends, it hasn’t felt like love–until the other day.

This has been the toughest opening of a school year I can remember.  The budget crisis has forced everyone working in schools and universities across the country to do more for less.  The tension over who would be retained and who would be let go has divided colleagues, and caused resentment and guilt to seep into faculty meetings and lunchtime conversations.  Yesterday I read in a newspaper that the federal government was awarding a local law enforcement agency a million dollar grant to work with men and women on probation.  Of course it’s important to help these people transition into a productive lifestyle, but why don’t we realize that shortchanging the schools will always result in an increase in the needs of those who cannot find their way?

I can imagine many educators have been ready to throw it in and find a less stressful way to make a living that allows for little things like regular bathroom breaks and more than 20-minutes to eat lunch.  We are held responsible for the test scores of children we didn’t raise, and in most cases, instruct for only a year.  School districts are forced to grab as much ADA money as possible just to pay the bills, so kindergarten classes have increased from 20 to 30 5-year-olds, and high school classes jam 40 teenagers in a room, forcing teachers to spend more time on crowd control than academic instruction.

But there’s that teacher who has managed to engage her students as she takes the time to patiently help a child who doesn’t understand.  I am filled with love for the experienced teachers who stay and for the brand new teachers who have taken on this wonderful, difficult work.  I walked to my classroom inspired and ready to give my best–one more time.