I want this part of me back

In January of 2003 I took over teaching 7th grade science at the lowest performing middle school in the entire state of Colorado. The day before school was going to start the district sent me to a new teacher workshop. The workshop was held by Doris Dempsey, and her talk set the tone for the proceeding 8 years of my career. Doris believes that people are innately good and students, especially need to be brought up not put down. This message stuck in my head and on the very first day at that inner city failing school I got a test of a lifetime. In my introduction to the class of how excited and happy I was to be their science teacher a wad of paper comes flying across the room and hits me square in the forehead. My first instinct was to react and react with "hey little fuckface, why would you do that?", but Doris' message rang in my mind and instead I said, "wow, that just hurt my feelings and makes me sad." I think I passed the test, because from that day forward I successfully created as positive as possible relationships with that group of kids.

A few years later the boy who threw the wad of paper asked if I remembered it and we shared a mature moment. That, of course, was before he was incarcerated on drug charges. I'd like to think that even though I didn't "save" him, that I had a tiny impact and he could carry that support in his challenges.

So, now I've been in the DR for 2 years and I work with an incredible science department. My first time ever working with so many people and I've accidentally turned into that teacher that just focuses on content. Of course I still like my kids and talk to them as if they are people, but on a daily basis I want to rip my hair out because someone doesn't "get" 4x=12.

Who is this teacher? Where did she come from? I don't want to be this way. In my 5 years overseas I've been missing professional development on teaching. I'm super glad that I've increased my content knowledge - a lot, but it's time to get back to why I became a teacher in the first place. The kids. And this whole process of trying to figure out what I want to do and where I want to live is so obvious. I want to be THE teacher in that video. I want to be the teacher that would make Doris Dempsey proud. But first and foremost and shockingly enough - I still want to be a teacher. This is the BEST job in the world and I'm going to fight for those martyr teachers that can't and we are going to make this world a better place.

p.s. one of my students here posted this video to my teacher FB page today. Thank you.