Nanowrimo - Fresh Faces

Today's excerpt:

There were seventeen faces looking up at her as she entered the lecture hall.  The class was starting five minutes late, but considering the phone call had only come twenty-two minutes ago she was quite proud of herself. 

The lecture was on ancient civilizations and how to bring the curriculum to the ten/eleven year old child.  The lecture went well, and the discussion took them right to the end of the ninety minute period.

As she drove home she thought how young they all seemed.  Young and enthusiastic.  She remembered being just like them in her second year of university.  It was so easy to see the problems with the education system and with classrooms and schools she visited.  It was so easy to see what should and must be done to improve the education system. 

She actually still felt that way, but had learned that it is best to change what you can within your own microcosm and hope that it will ripple out to the larger community.  Like Gandi said – Be the change you want to see in the world.

She had been a good teacher.  Some days perhaps even a great teacher.  Of course there had been moments were she had been much less than good.  Some days when she had missed the mark, but she had always loved the teaching, and the students. 

She hoped she could impart that to these seventeen students.  Love what you are teaching.  Love who you are teaching.  Love becoming a better teacher every day. 

Once home she got out of her school teacher clothes and into something she didn’t mind getting dirty.  She found the bucket and the mop and filled the sink with hot water and a liberal amount of Mr. Clean. 

She got on her hands and knees to scrub the more difficult spots and in doing so remembered when she was a young mother she would trick herself into washing the floor.  She would begin by saying she was only going to wash four of the tiles, but, of course, once on her hands and knees, four became six, became eight, became twenty and soon the whole floor was done.

She was less fussy now that there were no crawling babies.  The whole chore took just under thirty minutes. 

She kept thinking about those education students.  She tried to remember if there was ever a time she didn’t know she was a teacher.  She tried to remember why she had quit teaching.