| teaching and drinking on friday nights |
[25 Mar 2006|01:47am] |
i really don't like spending $50-ish on alcohol in one night and ending up relatively sober when i get home and getting home before 2am (and all the $50 of alcohol went into me).
i feel really bad for the girl with whom i spent the bulk of the evening--she's in her first year of teaching high school at an inner-city charter school and she went into it really honestly believing that she could make a difference for every kid*. i really wanted to be able to convince her that making a difference for one kid is enough to justify one's existence, since if she weren't there to make that difference, it's unlikely that there would be someone else who could make that difference, but i'm not sure i was convincing enough. it also doesn't help that "making a difference" is just a side benefit to me, that i teach because i enjoy it and not because it's a "good" thing to do.
* i think she's even looking at "making a difference" as being an immediate thing, and i tried to suggest that even if she has given up on a kid, she at least tried with that kid which is probably more than most (or all) of that kid's previous teachers and that just that little bit of trying could make a world of difference to that kid over the course of their life... but that's a hard sell.
( author unknown )
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