Friday, September 9, 2011

Friday afternoon

Teaching is not an 8:00-4:00 job where you punch in, become a teacher, punch out, and stop being a teacher. If you're a teacher, you're always a teacher, even when you're not in your classroom.

Sidenote: One of my pet peeves is when teachers do adopt this punch-clock mentality. If teaching is nothing more than a paycheck... why teach?

Back to the topic at hand: Long story short, it took me an hour to leave school today. 60 minutes to walk from the plaza to the bike parking lot (a walk that would ordinarily take 20 seconds). It seemed like I would take a few steps and then get into another long conversation with either a student or a colleague. Oh, I'm not complaining--not in the least! This lengthy end to the school-day was one of the many highlights of this week.

I love these conversations--conversations about how classes are going, conversations about how life is going aside from class, conversations about goals for the coming year, conversations about career goals, conversations about theology, conversations about faith... this afternoon had 'em all.

All this to say, I appreciate my students and the people I work with. I'm grateful for the community and the fact that this school environment doesn't encourage punch-clock-itis. It's fun to hear what colleagues are doing in their classes and it is such an encouragement to hear students thinking deeply about the world and about faith. Definitely a good end to the school-week.

No comments:

Post a Comment