My new job

I love my new job.
I haven't got used to kids calling me Mrs, using my name. It's all weird. But I love my job. At the end of the day, my legs and back hurt, my voice is coarse and I am exhausted. But I love my job. It's far away and I have to get up super early every morning. But I love my job.
I love seeing those kids raise their hands to participate in class. I love how they are excited about the things they are learning, the eagerness with which they add whatever knowledge they already had. I love the way they get more confident. They don't even realise it. They just slowly start to build up new skills.
I started the year feeling like a fraud. Without experience, without being sure of what I was supposed to do, afraid I'd do something wrong, afraid I'd fail, afraid they would pay for my lack of previous experience.
Now all these fears are slowly soothed and I get more confident.
I am still a bit angsty with the older kids. Afraid that what I'd give them is too hard or too easy, that a previous teacher would have taught them differently.
But they too, bring me a special kind of joy. The way they are getting together during our weekly debates, the way they start to develop their opinion, the start to link facts together to build arguments. The way they use what we did before to talk about a new topic.
I love my job.