optomism?

I am starting to feel pretty good about this whole teaching thing. The kids, my kids, are starting to respond to me pretty well. The honesty thing has really paid off. Just because the kids aren't all smart doesn't mean that they are all stupid. They at least know when we are just giving them another line of crap. I have been very honest with them and they know it, plus I truly care about them. They are starting to realize that I am more on their side than the institution's. It makes me so happy when they tell me that mine is their favorite class. One of the kids who started off the year on a bad foot, with the school and me, told me today that all first hour he just thinks about getting to come to my class. I realize, of course, that this is an exaggerated claim; but it still is great to hear. The other teachers and the administration gives me polite encouragement, but I know that I am not the ideal teacher for them. What really matters to me is that the students are comfortable in my class, because that is all that really matters. After time has had its due influence in our lives, and the decades are blurred in memory; I know that no one will look back and think that my lecture on the character of Walter or Beneatha from A Raisin In The Sun had changed their lives. The magic is always between the lines. It is in the associations and the extrapolations - it is the learning itself, not the content but the simple act of it. It is about the place where they learned to confident in their voice and in their minds. I will be happy if they just remember that I stopped making them say that things are gay when they mean bad.