Those Lost and Those Found

Having been in the education department for four years now, I often heard stories about how important a teacher could be in changing a student's life. In my mind, I don't think that I ever really came to terms with that. I thought it was "cute," something made up in Hollywood, a pipe dream of sorts. But student teaching has greatly altered my perspective on that.

Between seminar touching on our philosophy of teaching and some events that occurred this week, I began to realize my role as a teacher in students’ lives. One of the stories that has come out of this surrounds one of my students who moved to West Milford last year. Upon entering the school, this student had no motivation to succeed or respect for himself. Right as I began to take over teaching, this student was able to pick up his social studies grade to a low C with great help from my cooperating teacher. Yet he was still struggling, especially outside the classroom with getting in fights.

I had noticed that most of the other students treated his opinions as inferior and would make fun of him for whatever answer he was giving to the cooperating teacher. Taking note of this, I made every effort to validate his perspective in front of the class. After about two days, the class would no longer tell him to put his hand down because “he had nothing good to say.” And the results were amazing.

Simply by giving the student a voice that was respected, he responded by doing every homework assignment and began to score high on quizzes. Just yesterday, upon leaving the classroom, the student called out to me before leaving and said, “Hey Mr. Callamari! I’m studying for you tonight!” I can’t even begin to say how good that made me feel.

Sometimes its hard to give it your all. When your class is not responding or disrespecting your authority, it is extremely difficult to continue the long battle of caring for students. But there is a victory to be won, and it is true that sometimes, the lost can be found.