My Heroes

It’s the end of the school year and everyone else is counting down. In high school, there is a 3 part countdown: days until exams, days until the last day of school and days until the last teacher workday. Usually, I’m an avid and faithful participant in the annual countdown, but this year, not so much. This year I would be utterly oblivious to the countdown if it weren’t for the morning and afternoon greetings of my fellow teachers: “Good Morning! 11 More days!”-----8 hours later------“Have a good night! Only 10 more days!” So, I ask myself “Self, why aren’t you excited? For the last four years, you’ve updated the daily countdown on the board as a waving flag for all to see. Why not this year?” And the only conclusion I can come to is “Self, you are a blessed one.”


I love my job. And not just the way you love your job, but still count down the hours until happy hour so you can get back to your real life, but I love my job like it is my real life. And I am SO THANKFUL for that. It’s not just a monthly paycheck that pays my bills, but it’s a part of my life that brings exhilaration and motivation, tears and fits of laughter, hard work with great reward, rough encounters that bring deeper commitment and smiles that will forever be embedded in my heart. I know this may be hard to believe, but I actually smile on my way to work and I smile on my way home. Now granted, some days I might need a shot of something to help induce that smile b/c some child has driven me to insanity levels that threaten to send me to jail if I were to respond to him, but nonetheless, I still smile. 

You might be wondering, ‘What’s so great about your job Jamie?” Well, let me share my many blessings with you. I love my job because it’s like going to visit family (that you really like) every day! I have a special relationship with my students. Though I am not a mother yet, in many ways they are like my own children. They are from other countries and most of their parents do not speak English, so when they arrive here in the U.S. they are caught between two worlds of childhood and adulthood. They are children in their parents’ eyes, in their native tongues and in their households, but they are adults in the day to day life of America. Someone has to pay the bills, interpret at doctor’s appointments, get a driver’s license, cook dinner and help their little siblings with homework while their parents work minimum wage 3rd shift jobs. They have 1-3 years of English language at their grasp, maybe an elementary education in their native country and have to meet the same graduation standards as your American-born child with all the blessings. Yet, they are here. Every day, they are here. They greet me with a smile as they walk through my door. They are compassionate. They are dedicated. They are brave and they are resilient. I admire them, I respect them, I learn from them. I am their biggest fan and they are my heroes.

So, I’m not counting down the days until they leave, but I might start counting down the days until they return because they have taught me that sometimes all that matters is that you show up.

Everyone's Favorite Conjunction

So, the other night my husband and I got into a grammatical debate over his graduate student essay. The first line began with a statement that included an unnecessary conjunction. Though the purpose of his introduction was to be a witty mockery of the author he was analyzing, I could not enjoy the sarcasm because I was SO distracted by the intruding conjunction. The English teacher in me cringed every time I heard “so post labeling.” We proceeded to debate whether or not the clever imitation of the author was more valuable than grammatical symmetry. Eventually, the debate boiled down to two points: whether or not my husband knows his basic conjunctions and the proper usage of them (there will be a footnote lesson for all at the bottom of this blog) and how hypocritical I am to reject the overuse of “so” in written form when I so frequently use it in verbal form. So, in honor of the overuse of conjunctions everywhere I decided to blog about it to honor so with the much needed respect it so deserves. Are you already beginning to see how so annoying “so” can be? So, why do we use “so” so much because I am so over it!


PS: For those of you wondering, “So, why did write this lame blog?” I ask, “So, why are you still reading it?”

*A conjunction is used to connect two related ideas or complete thoughts. Please note that none of the statements above actually require a conjunction. An easy way to remember your basic conjunctions is the acronym FANBOYS, though there are many more.

F-for

A-and

N-nor

B-but

O-or

Y-yet

S-everyone’s favorite………………so!