Being a teacher means many many things. The masses all seem to have an opinion about the occupation of teaching, how much teachers should make a year and what they should be teaching. There are some that criticize, others that are sympathetic offering the condolence of “I could never be a teacher”, and others who simply think of a teacher they used to have back in their own school days.

If you were blessed with a wonderful teacher at some point in your grade school career you probably can still picture the way their room was set up, the way the light filled through their window in the afternoon before you headed home, and the magical way they could teach something to you that you didn’t even realize you were learning. These are the kind of teachers that made me want to teach.

Of course, I have to mention the horrible teachers we’ve all encountered. The ones that make you turn up your nose to the simplest of projects and presentations purely in spite of their horrid class. The teachers you always seemed to see in the hallways and try to avoid. Oh those teachers…but they serve their purpose trust me they do! Some days I can hear myself mimicking things I heard my horrible teachers say years ago and other days I take a deep breath and ask myself “What would Mrs. Stellman/Mrs. Clare/Dr. Self do?!?.” (all teachers that inspired me).

As much as I can go on and on about teachers…the real stars of the show continue to be my students. I have had the opportunity to teach three completely different sets of students over the past three years. Each group has had their own sets of personalities and quirks about them, thus bringing a new light and view to my world with each ring of the bell. What I am coming to find out about my students is something that teachers never seem to mention. The strange reality that in our minds teachers become a constant, where students are ever changing. Not just in the mere sense that teachers may stay in the same school for years and have an abundance of students, but in the fact that students continue to emerge into the people they will become and the world they will create around them while teachers remain in the safety blankets of our minds as people we used to know and learn from.

It is a very bittersweet thing. In any essence becoming a teacher is the purest realization that we, as people, never stop learning.

I may only have my students for a short amount of time but their stories and lives stay with me long after they leave my classroom. I can only hope that their futures, goals and dreams are full of the potential I see in them. That their worth is measured not by the grades that they receive in life, but by the joy they find in becoming who they were made to be. I hope and pray that my class is a small step to getting them to that point. At the end of the day…that will always be my greatest ambition as a teacher.

To Showcase my Wonderful Current Students Here are Some of their Fashion Illustration Sketches: