it pulls you back in
Yesterday one of my students asked me, after class was over and she was the last one left in our online classroom, if we would have new classmates next time.
Me: "What do you mean? Like next week?"
Her: "No, like next round, when we do this again."
She'd meant after the end of our ten weeks together, at the start of the new quarter. Ahhhh! I didn't have the heart to tell her there wouldn't be a next round. I said I didn't know, and that I'd have to ask the school.
After I responded, she raised her hand – which was not necessary at this point, but a testament to her behavior in class. When I called on her, she told me unprompted that she'd asked because she loves the class and looks forward to the two days at the end of the week because it's when we meet.
This student is the youngest in my class and has the hardest time with our material. Even our classroom setup is a challenge for her, because a lot of our activities involve typing, which she's not used to. It worried me, at the start of our time together – what could I do to support her in this class? Would she feel demotivated by my corrections, by the complexity of the material, by how quickly the others worked?
But her enthusiasm never wavered. The other week, I asked if she could switch to using Google Chrome, and I taught her how to use Google Docs' Voice Typing function to make our activities easier for her to do. I got notifications on my Google Docs after I'd let her go that showed her practicing it. At the start of a session a few days later, she asked if we'd be doing workbook activities that day. When I said yes, she clapped and said "yay", because she was so excited to use her new tool.
I know I talk a lot of shit about how overwhelmed I feel teaching, but man. You can't defend against things like that just melting your heart. I won't be able to teach this class again, and I still am looking forward to the day I won't have to think about lesson plans all week. But it's little things like that that make it so, so worth it – that make me almost want to keep doing this forever.