Confessions of a High School English Teacher

1. I love my job, and I love my students.  I know that no matter what is going on in my life, when I greet each of my students at the door, it is simply impossible for me not to smile.  They bring me joy each and every day, and they are the reason that I teach.
   
   
2. A piece of my heart belongs to my students.  Some days, I come home in tears because I know the struggles that some of my students have to go through.  But more days than not, I come home bursting with energy because of the interactions I had with my students that day.
   
   
3. I take the privilege of sharing literature with my students seriously.  As I teach junior and senior English, I could be the last person to impress a love of words upon them, so I had better make their experience a good one.
   
   
4. I love being called “Mrs. Vriend,” whether it’s being yelled down the hallway or tacked on to a quiet “thank you” at the end of class.  I love the person I become when I step into my classroom, as I am this person nowhere else.  I am a teacher, a leader, a mentor, a listener, a guide.
   
   
5. I may teach a lot of classics, but in every free moment I have, it is commercial fiction that holds my heart.  Give me the gravy-eating cowboys like Brady Stoner, give me a tear-jerking Nicholas Sparks love story, and give me the coffee-addicted characters of Erynn Mangum.  That is the literature I fell in love with.
   
   
6. I share my life with my students.  They have to share their thoughts and stories with me, so it is only fair that I have to share mine with them.  So my students know that I am a horrific speller.  They know that I don’t eat any fruit.  They know how I met my husband.  They know that I am scared of jello.  Because I know that if I trust them with this information, they will trust me back.
   
   
7. My day does not end when I leave school at 3:30.  Usually, I still have several hours of work ahead of me every evening.  And my Saturdays quickly fill up with essay grading and lesson planning.  I am prone to complain about this on occasion, but I also know that I am helping my students to grow and learn.  If I don’t devote hours to grading their essays, their writing is never going to get better.  So I do this for them because I love them.
   
   
8. My classroom has a chocolate tax, which several of my students have discovered.  If you enter my classroom with chocolate, you are required to share some with me, the chocolate tax enforcer.  This has become one of my favorite rules.
   
   
9. When I am not doing school work or reading books, I do regular activities, despite what some of my students seem to think.  “Do you watch movies, Mrs. Vriend?” they have inquired.  Yes, I watch movies.  I am far more normal than they seem to think.
   
   
10. With all of my heart, I want my students to succeed.  I want them to learn.  All of that scary red writing on your paper?  It’s there because I love you and want you to learn from your mistakes.  I have high expectations because I know that you can meet them.  We can do it together.