I don’t have to do this

For the last 30 years, two of the teachers at my school have done a traveling show. It is a huge production and involves the entire fifth grade and one of the fourth grade classes here. There is dancing, singing, narration, lots of costumes. The show picks some aspect of American history as the theme and then follows that theme through our Nation’s history.

Before I came to the school they were using a lot of slides. I said I could do the same thing with a digital camera and a computer. So now I’m in charge of providing either a picture slide show of the school, or this year I did a film montage. My part is really very small.

Yesterday as the teachers and I were talking about it and the last minute things I needed to do for it, they reminded me again that I don’t have to do this for them, that other teachers wouldn’t help them with it like I do. They’re right. I don’t have to help them with their show. But they don’t have to do the show. Nobody says that teachers have to do as much as they do for their students. And they do so much. One of them was here every day during Spring Break working. The teacher who writes the show takes a personal day to write it.

None of us have to do what we do for these kids, but none of us could imagine doing otherwise.