School Days: Watching my students grow up

Recently, some of my past 1st grade students from Colorado were visiting Kansas City, and I had the chance to meet up with them for lunch.

Time flies when you're teaching 1st grade.
These past students are now in 4th, 6th, and 8th grade.

What a treat!

I remember each of them and their little quirks and funny things they said.

For instance, I remember when I was teaching a grammar lesson, and Nathan (back left) was sitting with a serious look on his face, obviously absorbing with great thoughtfulness every word I said. :)  He finally raised his hand and asked with such earnest concern, 

"But do birds have ears??  That's my question!"

Me:  "Nathan, what does that have to do with what we're doing right now?"

Nathan:  (hanging his head) "nothing"

I still smile at that.  And (because it made me curious) have since learned that birds have inner ears but no outer ears.

I used to keep a separate journal to log the comical things that my students said.  But funny things were said daily, and I eventually stopped trying to write them all down.  Certain ones do still stick in my memory.  Like the bird's ears story.  And the time when I asked a little boy what he daydreams about when I'm teaching, and he quietly admitted, "ninjas."


I regularly hear parents say how the years fly while watching their children grow.  The days go slowly, but the years fly by.  My friend Sarah with three little ones says, "and nap time passes like light speed!"

As a teacher, though not yet a parent, I too have experienced this "children grow so quickly" phenomenon to some degree.  Take my first class of 1st graders, for example.  They are currently in high school and will start driving this year!  I remember when they were learning how to add and hold a pencil correctly!  In the same amount of time I passed through my twenties, they have passed through their CHILDHOOD.  That's a wild thought to me.  And they will go to college in a few years and then maybe get married.  I feel like I just graduated from college. 

It is a gift, this job of mine.  I love getting to walk alongside people during the brief time that is their childhood.  Soon, they will be adults.  To know someone as a child, I think, is to know them in a special way.

I still feel a certain bond to my own childhood friends, even if I rarely talk with them now.  They knew me when I was hyper and unrefined, before I became the picture of sophistication and grace that stands before you today. :)

And I think about how Jesus loved little children and welcomed them and encouraged adults to become like them - not in the untrained, undisciplined, ignorant kind of way - but I think in the wide-eyed, fascinated, eager to learn, trusting kind of way.

To childhood!