This past week was a very hard one for me emotionally. It has been a year since my mom died, and I was really emotional and tense. Not a good combination when dealing with abrasive people, and I happen to work with a person who could be called abrasive. It was not a pretty thing to see, and I won't go into what actually happened, but I will say something was said that really, really offended me, and since I was emotional, I fought back... and then broke down in tears.
However, what I want to talk about is what my students did. As I said, I broke down. I ran into my room, forgetting I had a few students in my room. They saw me, and quickly left to lunch. However, when lunch was over, one of them slipped back into my room and left a 2 liter bottle of Pepsi on my desk with an envelope. In the envelope was a gift cert for a 50 min massage... which started me crying again.
The next day, during the class who witnessed the incident, I had several students tell me how grateful I was that I stood up for myself. More than one stepped up to tell me that despite what this other person had said, I was a good teacher, and they were learning a lot from me.
I figure, if my students are doing and saying these things, I must be doing something right, and in the end, that is what is important.
