This week, I have had the experience of getting to know and work with many students who are identified as ‘vulnerable children.’ Certainly, all children come to the classroom with their own histories of both joy and pain, their own triumphs and their own challenges. However, for some children, their childhoods are far too prematurely cut off. Sometimes these children make themselves clear and sometimes they are harder to see. I have come to recognize the signs of particular vulnerability in some of the students – the desperation to cling to any adult who shows them attention and care, the haunted look in their eyes and constant bags under their eyes, their downcast heads during times that anyone would think would be filled with youthful delight. Although each event I encountered this week that made me more familiar with these signs filled me with heartbreak, it also motivated me to connect with that child just a little more, to give them just a few more words of encouragement, and to share more smiles and more laughter with them. Reading with them one on one during quiet reading time, for example, provided me with the perfect opportunity to give the child a little of the close proximity to, and individual attention of, a trusted adult that they crave. When I did this for one student and he approached me the next day with the exact same book to read again, I knew that he had gotten something he needed out of the encounter.

All of these events reminded me that the job of the teacher is far more than simply relating curriculum. It is to be the cheerleader for children who need a positive boost, to be the nurse when students are injured, to be a role model for children to learn from, to be the supportive adult for a child who does not have an involved or positive one or even one at all, to be the mentor for students who struggle, to be the cook when children are hungry, and to be the crying shoulder for students when they need one.

Of course, teachers have limits and should listen to them. As much as I may be inclined to, I cannot take the weights of all my students’ lives on my shoulders alone, especially when I am not the extra support in the room who has more time but the only teacher facing twenty or more shining faces, each one with their own needs. That is a perfect recipe for burn-out and I know now that this really is the role I wish to play for my whole life. I must learn to prioritize my own self-care as much as I prioritize my students’ needs or I won’t be able to be the strong and confident example my future students will need.

Keeping this in mind though, I know now that my future classroom will prize empowerment and social and emotional learning as much or even more than it will prize academic studies. For example, it will incorporate things such as daily temperature checks so that students will know they are listened to and cared about. In this way, I hope to learn how to best build a safe space for all of the children who will walk through the school doors and especially for the most vulnerable. Then, no matter what else they are facing in their lives and even if they forget the life cycle of a butterfly or the meaning of Newton’s third law, I may be able to have every student who walks out of my room clinging to two words for the remainder of their lives: I matter.