Little Bits of Success

Success comes in all shapes and sizes. Success for teachers is no different. Some consider it success when their students get high scores, others by how engaged their students seem to be during class. Success for you might be a high evaluation from your supervisor or a thank you letter from a parent. Or it could be a thumbs up from the year principal when you meet in the corridor (Yep. I got that! :D)

While a high evaluation is pretty sweet (speaking of which I did get Excellent in my evaluation for this semester:) Alf il hamdillah!). But I've always been more of a "it's the small things that count" enthusiast. I derive great pleasure and pride from the subtle and not-so-conspicuous.

If my students smile at me in the corridors instead of scurrying by, that's success to me. If while I'm at the playground duty they come up to me and start babbling about a weird (and often disturbing in the case of Abdulaziz) story of their last adventure, that is success to me. Things like that brighten up my day.

But secretly, I believed in my heart that nothing vouches for my success more sincerely than a bunch of kids choosing to hang out in my classroom during recess instead of hurrying down for their ritual running, kicking and potato chips eating. So far it hasn't happened.

Until this morning.
They say, be careful what you wish for it cuz it might juuust come true. Oh how true. I had just finishing substituting for Ms. Sahar and only had 10 minutes to prepare for my next class, so I was stressing. The door opened and four of my boys walked in with their sandwiches. They were here to stay. Ahmed smiled and said: "we just thought we'd drop by".
I grinned, successfully hiding my panic attack. I mean, of ALL the recesses in ALL the weeks, throughout the whole year, why oh why today? Don't you just love Murphy?:)

Oh who am I kidding, I didn't care about my next lesson, I was on cloud number 9! They started babbling on about hilarious things. Then Ahmed told me about the huge incline plane system he built at home, which gave me a great idea. I told them to help themselves with all the boxes that fill my classroom (studying simple machines has turned my classroom into a dump!) to start building their own inclined planes. I provided toys cars for extra pleasure. Instantly, chips bags were tossed aside and they were on it. They loved it.

Soon the time was up, so I left them in class and went down to pick the rest of the kids. When I re-entered the class the boys were no where to be seen. I didn't think about it too much as I was busy manually seating both Abdulla's. I'm going to have to start using scotch tape soon I swear to God. Suddenly the boys started yelling in excitement and surprise. Two boys were hiding under the table and the other two were (very effectively) buried under a huge pile of boxes. I cracked up. I would've never found them. I'm bad at noticing things (Dalia will attest to that only too gladly) as it is, so when my entire attention is focused on discovering WHO IS THROWING THE STUPID ERASERS - it kinda gets harder!

Call me weird, but I choose to share this as my success story, and not a cold lifeless 92.5% on my evaluation paper. But the fact that they chose to "drop by" when they could've been down acting insane and badgering each other (something they derive GREAT pleasure from believe me), totally made my day!

These are the things that make my heart make a "happy happy joy joy" dance. Things like a third grader from a class I substituted for at the very beginning of the year coming up to me in recess yesterday and saying:

Kid: Do you teach English?
Me: nope sweetie. I teach grade 4 science.
Kid: Okay what classes do you teach?
Me: 4A, B, C and D (the kid is in E)
Kid (slapping head in disappointment): ohhh.. then I am not lucky.

The thing is, I'm not half as good as he seems to think I am. And I'm not sure how accurate it is to be called lucky cuz I'll be teaching you next year. But that doesn't really matter. What matters is that he brightened my day. Made my heart skip a beat.

I'm so thankful to Allah. Being appreciated is a blessing. And what a blessing it is.