Selling out instead of settling in

I'm not a very experienced teacher, but I've spent a fair amount of time in classrooms. I am the first to admit that every group of kids that walks across the threshold to your room has some challenge. It usually comes in the flavor of "needing". Needing love, needing acceptance, needing care, needing learning. And it's all yours to give. What a priceless mission we have been given, that we can be so much to so many.

It's been a rough year. 12 days in, and I can't even see a mile up the road. I've sweetened, cajoled, promised, yelled, slammed doors, scowled, and then cried. I've been sleepless, upset and pushed into a place I never thought I'd see - to leave the career that holds my heart.

What do you do when you have a class that is nothing but needs? Is it possible for one person to be so much to so many all at once? These children, who I have promised to lead for an entire year of their lives, can't come together but instead fall apart at every seam. I am catching marbles that crash and scatter, only to be put into a bag with a hole in the bottom.

What do you do?

You look beyond what you think you know. You swallow your pride and ask for help. You look at ideas you would never have considered, because desperation gives everything a new taste. You might even sell out to the most fundamental of your beliefs.

I made a promise to these 22 children, that I would shepard them for a year and teach them. They have become more important than my most precious beliefs in teaching.