A Good Idea?

Yesterday as I was looking at my facebook friends' profile updates, I saw that one person I went to college with wrote that she was finding former students on fb. I had done a little looking before to no avail, but reading that made me want to do some more searching. Last night I found a girl I taught my second year of teaching and by looking at her friends I was able to find several more previous students. I don't know how high schoolers and college students feel about their 3rd grade teacher finding them on fb, but like Jason said, the worst they can do is ignore my friend request.

So far three have said yes, and another found me through one of them.

I have mixed emotions about the discoveries I'm making. As a teacher, you do all you can to teach, instruct, and mold your students. You hope that you've made at least a little bit of a positive impact on their lives. You hope they maintain the sweetness and innocence they had years ago. You hope they maintain their Christian faith.

As much as I may wish for these things, I'm finding it isn't always the case. Everyone makes his/her own choices, and as I'm finding, sometimes those choices aren't the ones their 3rd grade teacher would make for them. Sometimes those choices aren't anything their 3rd grade teacher would have imagined for them. Some of those choices burden my heart. At the same time, I'm hoping that I may still have a chance to make an impact on them, even now. To spark a thought or a memory that points them in the right direction. To help them remember where they were and where they could be going.

And my focus needs to be on the positives as well. The student who is still at the Christian school (one of the very few) and is headed to BJ this fall. The student who is an El. Ed. major at Taylor. Probably not because I was their 3rd grade teacher (probably in spite of it more likely), but because they have made right choices and decisions.

Maybe for my heart, my memories, this wasn't the best idea. But maybe for other reasons I don't even know yet, this can be used by God to be a great idea.