You see, my mother and I are what are called "polar-opposites." Where she is whimsical; I am rational. Where she is creative; I am organized. Where she is irrational; I am logical. We love each other more than life itself, but we make each other CrAzY! To be fair though, for every ounce of crazy she has ever made me, I have done at least twice as much to her. (I was the spawn of Satan. Really. I was terrible. Ask around, it's the truth and ain't nobody gonna sugar-coat it for you to save my reputation.)
One thing that we have in common though is the love of a new chalk board eraser, a heart that races as we walk down the office supplies aisle at Wal*mart, and an uncontainable squeal of joy as we open up a new 64 count box of Crayola crayons. For the first seventeen and three quarters years of my life I stifled these feelings. The LAST thing (that I would ever admit) that I would chose to be as an adult is a teacher....my mom is a teacher.
However, she is not JUST a teacher. She is the best teacher. She is the teacher that literally REMEMBERS every student, not just the smart ones or the ones that smell nice. She is the teacher that ten years into their successful career, students can still remember their favorite teacher and without pause say that the ONE teacher that told them that they could do anything and meant it was Mrs. Walton. My Mom guys! She's THAT teacher. A life changer.
She taught at an elementary school and when given the classroom combination of a severely disabled, a non-reader, an abused, a fostered, an attention deficit, and a learning impaired child in a classroom full of others wonderfully high and desperately low she could turn them into the highest readers and the most improved statistically. She taught second graders to believe in themselves, how to laugh at their mistakes, how to set goals and reach them, but most importantly that that are what THEY believe and not what someone else thinks of them. In her classroom students were no longer described by a disability but by a personality or a smile. They knew that. They KNEW that they are different in her eyes.
Now back when I was in high school I tutored a little girl and after a few weeks of working with her after school, she ran to me with tears in her eyes saying that she had gotten the highest grade on a math test...ever. She was so proud that she had done it herself. She had learned that math didn't have to be the boss of her. She wanted to tell me that she had done it, but it was only after I believed in her. My mom was there for that experience. She told me later that she knew I had "it" all along, the passion for teaching. I knew she meant it and from that day forward I pursued Math Education as my career.
I teach high school math, 9th through 12th grade, at a small school now. I try to instill the same lessons into their hearts as my mom did to so many of her students the thirty some years that she taught. When my students complain about an assignment (because I KNOW that math is the single most hated subject since the dawn of time) I simply respond, "I wanted to become a teacher for two reasons: The second one being that I like to torture high school students." (A joke, of course) The number one reason though will always be that I am trying to one day be half the teacher that my mother was and that I am only striving to change one life like she changed so many others.
(Here we are together after my college graduation. I love this picture of her and even though I don't love me it the picture I cherish this photo because it's one of very few of us together.)
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