I'm sure I have my teacher friends and my mom hooked by now, so thanks for sticking around.
I have been feeling called to write about my experience as a first year teacher for about two months. However, with the end of school, getting married (NBD!!), and going on a honeymoon I just let things slip away from me. Not that any of you were dying to read about my innermost thoughts on teaching, but who knows?
I want to start out by saying that everyday (I am not exaggerating) I wake up and feel like the luckiest girl in the world that I get to be a teacher. I get to shape little minds and make them feel loved and cared for. The Lord chose ME to do this hefty job. He thought I was equipped to handle the emotional stress of this job. He made me and decided I would be one of the chosen people that are lucky enough to spend their days with children. Me!!! Is that not the luckiest thing? Thank you, God!
Guys. Teaching is the bomb-diggity. Not just because I have summers off (okay, a small break is wonderful but I am longing to be back in the classroom with little humans singing songs and seeing ah-ha moments), but kids are just awesome. What other kind of job do you have 19 little friends telling you that you're the best teacher ever (pretty sure they tell everyone that) and a long winded story about their favorite dinosaur at 8:10 in the morning? Literally no other job. September through June are busy and can be brutal around testing time (yes, we still take tests in 2nd grade and yes, we still have SOL's we have to teach... just not an SOL test) but it is the best thing I have ever done.
My first year of teaching I was blessed with the most amazing mix of students. All with their own background, their own style of learning, and their own knowledge they brought to the table. I could predict which students brought their own lunch, which preferred yogurt over the hot lunch, and which students would bring "Pirate's Booty" for snack that day. They became my best friends (and I would even venture out enough to say my family) last year. KIDS ARE AWESOME AND I CAN'T SAY IT ENOUGH. While teaching, I was able to witness things that I had never even thought of before. For example, we had a superhero guy come in (he has a name but I can't remember it because #summer) and he had a pretty intense spray tan. He was this anti-bullying character and the "good guy." After the assembly this superhero was a part of, one of my favorite people (okay he might be 8 years old but he is the sweetest) said, "Miss Jacobsen, I'm really surprised by that." "Why, _______?" "Well, I've never seen a superhero with the same color skin as me." BLESS. HIS. HEART. My sweet student thought the superhero was African American and pointed out he had never seen an African American superhero before. You can bet your bottom dollar that night I was researching how to write a children's book because I was so heartbroken over the simplest of things. To me, it was a bad spray tan. To him, it was a role model, someone like him.
This takes me to Charlottesville. I am not going to get into the politics of it AT ALL. I am going to say we need to do better. We have to. For my students, for the soldiers that fought for our freedom, and for ourselves. I see what happened in Charlottesville and my heart breaks thinking about my students. We shared laughs, tears (okay fine I cried in front of my students), jokes, songs, joy, and sadness together in our classroom. We had people from all socioeconomic levels and of all shades of skin color. But those differences weren't even thought about, and it hurts me to know any of my students might have an idea of what is happening and start to believe there are differences in people based on appearances.
While I am heartbroken over the state of this nation, I am even more hopeful because of my 19 little friends. They will become engineers, teachers, doctors, construction workers, servers, and many more things. And they will bring their kindness with them to spread to everyone they meet. I wish everyone could know them and experience their joyfulness because they are world changers. I feel honored that God chose me to be their 2nd grade teacher. More than anything I wish I could have been their 3rd grade teacher, but now they get to disperse and spread their kindness to even more people--how cool is that?
Miss Jacobsen's room 37 class was joyful and kind and everything good. And just like NeedToBreathe sings in their song, I pray that these hallelujahs be multiplied.
As for next year, I need to be better. I need to be more patient, more gracious, more student-oriented rather than score-oriented. My first class ever taught me how to be better and I owe it to them to make it happen. I am excited to meet my new batch of students but will miss my first class terribly. If you are the praying type--would you join me in prayer for Charlottesville and for this upcoming school year? See you in another year when I decide to blog again! For now, enjoy this picture of my sweet second graders at their graduation!!! (With faces marked out of course)
