We’d argue that there’s nothing purer than the inner workings of a kid’s mind. We’d also bet there are few people who better understand those quirky little thoughts and feelings tiny humans experience than teachers.
The way teachers and early childhood educators manage to cut through the sheer madness and not only teach children how to function in the real world, but also find little nuggets of laughter along the way, is nothing short of wonderful.
So, in an effort to warm our cold, black hearts, we forced a bunch of teachers to tell us the cutest stories they’ve got. The sweetest thing we learned is that most couldn’t choose just one moment that made them fall into a sobbing puddle of feelings.
Keep reading if your heart’s in need of some warming today, too.
“Throughout my placement experience at Victoria University, it was always really incredible to be a part of the magic with children as they freely expressed themselves during our music and movement sessions. Each child dancing and singing, moving their bodies with so much joy and laughter really highlights the importance of what we do as early childhood educators.” — Melanie
“I was teaching a maths lesson when I learned of the passing of my grandfather. I dropped my pen and moved to the back of the room. My students immediately knew something was wrong. They all got out of their seats and collectively group hugged me. When I told them what I had just found out, they continued the hugs said beautiful things until I left.” — Courtney
“Post-breakup I had been really trying to put on a show for the kids so they didn’t realise how down I was, then one morning, I was feeling great and was going through Morning Gratefulness and one of my students, Caleb, says ‘I’m grateful because I’m happy Miss Kumari is back, I’ve missed her.’ I asked him how he knew I’d been down and he goes ‘we could all tell but now you’re back’.” — Vindhya
“One of my favourite things about teaching younger years is their innocent spelling mistakes.” — Georgie
“On the weekend, I saw a kindergarten student of mine outside school. On Monday, they brought up seeing me with the rest of the class. Everyone was in shock, asking, “don’t you live here?” It turned out three-quarters of the class thought the teachers lived and slept at school.” — Georgie
“It was the Year Six farewell of students I taught two years previously. During their leaving photos, they wrote something they loved about primary school. I was overwhelmed with the number of students who wrote how much they loved my classes and expressed their best year was in my class.” — Courtney
“Well, I’ve had a lot of special moments while teaching science. I was teaching kindergarten about “push” and “pull” forces. We dropped various objects of different weights to the ground. I asked them why they thought the objects always landed on the ground. They were exploring gravity as a “pull” force. They thought something was pulling on the objects or they were pushing them downwards. I asked them to explore jumping, did they always come back to the ground? Some of them said no (usual for some five-year-olds to think that). So they all started jumping and trying different ways to “fly” off into the air (so cute). After a while, they all discovered that they were being pulled (not pushed) back to the ground by “something” — they had “discovered” gravity.” — Sue
If all these warm and fuzzy stories have inspired you to pivot to a career that brings you real, pure, unadulterated joy, we highly recommend checking out the postgraduate Education courses at Victoria University. Here, you’ll also find information about Victoria University’s short courses in Education with options for six months of study. Their courses equip you to be an educator for people of all ages, whether you want to be an early childhood educator, a primary or high school teacher, or you’re wanting to hone your skills in tertiary teaching. Enrolments are still open for 2021, so hop to it.
