Who Am I?

The question of the century, I think. I am a high school teacher and in saying that it is like I am telling you all about myself. It is what I have spent 28 years of my life doing, even as a single-parent, I taught. I put all my energies into it trying to design lesson plans that challenged, or made students think by digging deep. At first, this approach worked. Students rose to the challenge and many came out the winners. After they graduated, often they would come back and tell me that their freshman course in Psycholoygy, American History, or Government was a revision of the class they had with me. I felt encouraged. It was as if I had taken them to the mountain top and back again. They were successful and I had a hand in helping them. I was fulfilled. It was gratifying. And of course, I have to be honest here and say that my own ego was boosted. However, today when people hear I teach high school, they almost want to apologize. The days of challenging students isn't as easy as it once was. Today, many students want the easy road. They enter into my AP class and ask if it's going to be fun. NO! AP is not fun; it is hard work, but if you work hard we might be able to also have fun. The fun doesn't come because the majority of the students don't want to work. Actually they just want their transcripts to say they took an AP class. SO all the hard work that went into the preparation for teaching the class, all the well thought out assignments only meant something to you, the teacher. They don't see any of it as fun. At night I teach college English and many of my students are going into education, but not secondary. They look at me in horror when I ask why not. There are days I look like that too. Some mornings I wonder if I can face another challenging day of teenagers questioning the day's lessons, or talking without regard for anyone else in the class, or just being rude. Our principal tells us that kids haven't changed that much, they are still the same. Unfortunately, she has not been in the classroom in quite some years so she is speaking from a time when kids listened to their elders, did what was asked and everything was fine. I would like to believe that kids today are that way. I look around me and well.......I have to say some of those common courtesies are gone. Today, not all students want to be challenged. I have found that many want things to be easily accessible, less thought provoking and time consuming. The age of computers and the internet should be a time of opening doors to new ideas and experiences. Wouldn't that be nice if it were true. The age of computers is part of the problem. Sometimes students, I believe, feel they don't a teacher just their computers.
So once again I ask myself WHO AM I and the answer is becoming much harder to find. I have to dig deeper these days. I know it is there hiding somewhere just out of sight.