Why educators still come back

Being on time by Alex Sanchez

 The cartoon on this page was created by a student. Let me give you some background. Alex was my student last year in World History. He always tried to get all his work done but he did have difficulty getting to first period on time. He worked very hard to keep his grades high, and told me his parents owned an ice cream shop, his father had contracted Covid-19 and he was having to help even more in the business because of his parents being sick. 
He was always smiling. Always. He was always drawing little cartoons for his friends and he would show them to me. I loved them and when I found out I was going to be doing a newspaper again this year, asked him to come and be our editorial cartoonist. He declined because his core classes were pretty tough and felt he wouldn't have the time to dedicate to art for a class. I sadly said okay.

When this year began, I saw Alex in the hallway outside the journalism room, big smile as normal and he asked how my year was going I responded with a,  "Great. But it would be better if you were drawing for this class." 

He asked me if there was anything particular I would like him to draw and I said just something about school life and he presented me several weeks later with the above cartoon about being late to school. This may not seem like a current issue  and it was drawn as a full page so I took it and kept it in hopes I could use it in a future edition. 

Fast forward to our last edition of the year, which we are currently working on. I had decided to increase the paging to 12 with full color and glanced to the side of my desk where the cartoon had resided since Alex gave it to me. I read it again and thought of how current it was now. 

You see, the tardiness to class had been increasing since school began and had reached epic proportions. New rules like after school (1 hour) and Friday school (2 hours) had be put in motion. Alex's cartoon fit right in. So the cartoon will run in the final paper. 

This young man who seems to always smile, works hard with his family, and draws for fun, is not even in my classroom any longer. He took a situation from his own life and created a cartoon which may hit home for some students. It sure did with me. 

These are the moments which keep teachers coming back, week after week, even when things are so bad they are leaving the profession in droves. This is one of the students who inspire me to keep going; keep working with them; keep encouraging them to blossom in their own way. There are many out there who outnumber the ones we watch circling the drain. We must keep going.