Compassion

I think that compassion is a touchy thing and can actually in certain situations belittle the student.  But in my case, I believe it made me stronger.  My fifth grade teacher, Ms. Logan, inspired me because she cared enough to take the extra time...not extra time to explain things, but extra time in order to give me extra work and keep me working hard.  To this day I still keep in touch with her and help her almost every year when she sets up her room.  I think compassion is a hard thing to come by, but also a very hard thing to pinpoint.  Those who are compassionate are not necessarily that way all the time.  I think many people may say you only can show compassion towards those who are less fortunate and in this case younger than you.  I don't thing this is true, I think that even the student can show compassion towards the teacher and not just when something drastic happens in the teacher's life.

I realize that I am sort of rambling about this whole compassion thing and maybe I should go a little deeper into this story of Ms. Logan.  As I said I didn't need extra help in subjects, but I did need more to do and she took the time to find me extra books to read, and math problems to figure out.  She's one of the only teachers I've had that has gotten to know me.  She cared about me and all of her students...and she showed it.  She's the reason that I kept loving school always wanting to do the best I could to show her that I was still working as hard as she taught me I could.  I guess it wasn't all about the learning that year either...my uncle died that year and I missed a week of school and at that age when something you don't understand happens you need a way to let it out.  She helped me to write out all my feelings and make a book out of them.   She changed my life because she is a compassionate woman.

I think that every teacher must have some level of compassion..how else are they teachers?  There's a lot of things that make up what I would qualify as a good teacher...but my most highly rated would be caring while being careful not to pity.  I hope that many more teachers will realize that the kids have their own personalities too, even when they're really young....taking the time to get to know them is all it takes.