52 Pick Up – Peace: Finding Satisfaction

 Doing Something You Love = Peace and Satisfaction

This year I was given the wonderful opportunity to once again teach grade 7 humanities, and within the first week I came to a simple realization –  Grade 7 is the grade in which I feel the deepest satisfaction.

Grade 7s are gangly, awkward and seem to have one foot entrenched in childhood while the other is beginning to walk the chasm into adulthood.

Grade 7s are impulsive, loud and silly.

That being said, Grade 7s and I just seem to click.

First of all, I absolutely love the curriculum, which is Canadian history.  I revel in digging into my country’s past as I search out titbits of intriguing stories.  Then more importanlty, there are the connections I have been able to quickly foster with this new class of students.  They are eager, accepting and for the most part even laugh at my jokes.  I can be silly and they are silly along with me.  After teaching an older grade level for more than 15 years I have been delighted to realize  two weeks have passed and not a single one of them have rolled their eyes at me.

Now the end of the school day arrives and am I tired, but not exhausted.  There is a difference.  I am tired because I have given much during they day in stretching their minds in helping them navigate the waters of adolescence.  The school day comes to an end and I know my students have been engaged in the work at hand.  I no longer have to cajole and practically dance on my hands to engage students who question each lesson and assignment at every turn.

Now I am not a pessimist but rather a  realist.  I know that at some point during the year the ‘brain fairy’ will once again visit my grade 7 ‘darlings’ and will add a few more hormones into their newly pubescent bodies.  Their brains will begin to rewire and the attitude of apathy and the overpowering quest of independence will push its way to the forefront.  At that point an infection of eye rolling will spread like a plague through the room.

Luckily I well versed in anti eye rolling tactics.