A year ago I never thought I would be a teacher, but now I am a month into teaching high schoolers and I am absolutely loving it. Although I know I won't do this for the rest of my life, teaching is still so rewarding because I can form such great relationships with all of my students. Since I am their teacher, I am responsible to be a positive role model to them and to reflect Jesus' character. In doing that, I also have to ensure that I am promoting PMA's mission statement, "Striving to Restore God's Image in Every Student."

Today was the first day it really hit me how important it is to instill God's image in every student. I have a student who started off the quarter great, getting A's on his quizzes and assignments. Then all of a sudden, he stopped turning in any assignments and started failing all his quizzes. Last friday, I brought gummy worms for his whole class. After class, he came to me and apologized for not taking any gummy worms, and when I asked him why he didn't want any, he replied saying, "I don't deserve them since I didn't do my homework." My heart broke. I pulled him aside and told him to never think that, and that his grade does not affect how I feel about him. After talking to him a bit more afterwards and giving him the chance to redo his assignment and turn it in late, I thought he would be fine. Then today I gave a test to his class, and I was instantly worried about him because he was absent yesterday, our test review day. He took the longest to finish his test. When all the students had left and he finally turned his in, I noticed that he didn't finish the last couple calculation problems on the back page. I asked him why he left them blank, and he simply said he didn't know how to do them. I know he's a smart kid, so I tried to help him out and explain the problems but he just had no idea. I then asked him why he was absent yesterday and he sort of just avoided the question and mumbled that he stayed home. I asked him why he didn't come, and he said, "I didn't want to slow the class down with my questions." Again, my heart sank. With tears in his eyes he said, "I just feel like I don't deserve the help and I'm not worth the time." I'm not usually one to cry for things, but I could barely hold it together in front of him as he had tears in his eyes telling me these words. I knew I had to stay strong for his sake, so I kept back tears and told him that he is always worth my time. I said the whole reason I am here is to teach the students and to make sure they are learning. I told him I don't care if I have to explain the concepts a hundred times if that's what it takes to help him understand. I'm not sure if he has the money to pay the extra dollar per day to stay after school for tutoring, so I told him I would personally tutor him everyday during lunch. He said thank you and apologized for not asking for help, and I gave him a hug and told him to come to me any time he needs help in anything. After he left my classroom I closed the doors and prayed to God for strength and guidance. I know this student is very quiet and doesn't talk to the other teachers much, so if he is opening up to me than I need to take that opportunity to help him. I prayed to God to help me reflect Jesus's character and to instill a sense of confidence and self worth in this student. If you are reading this I ask you to pray for this young man, he really needs it. Not only that, but also pray that God guides me to be a positive role model to my student. I also ask you to pray for my roommate Tyler, because he has my student's younger sister in his class and she isn't doing too well either.

As you can imagine, it was pretty hard to teach for the rest of the day after having that emotional conversation with the student. Then on top of that, the high school baseball game got cancelled because the field was flooded from the rain. I am one of the coaches for the team, and I was looking forward to the game. Not only that but I found out our season is basically over because half of our team will be ineligible after this friday when mid-quarter grades come out. Although I wasn't very happy with my players who had bad grades, I had already been planning on taking the team out for pizza after our last game, so since today is technically our last day I decided to take them out today. I am so happy I did that because it completely turned my day around and cheered me up. The other coach(Principal Sanchez) was running late, so it was just the guys and me at first. We ordered a few pizzas and just spent the next couple hours hanging out and sharing laughs. Being able to hangout with the boys outside of school was awesome because we could all be ourselves and just talk. I can already tell that my relationship with each one of them is significantly stronger after today.

After being here for a month I realize why all the past SM's that I know always say that their SM year was the best year of their life. It's not because they were on a beautiful island or because they took a year off of school, but because of the students. The students make this experience one that I will never forget. I could care less about the beautiful scenery, as long as I have my students I'll be more than happy. If any of you are reading this and have thought of being a student missionary, I will tell you now that you will definitely not regret it. You can't trade this experience for anything else in life. If you're worried about missing a year of college, don't worry, school will still be there when you get back. Be a student missionary, you'll love it.

Thanks for reading,

Andrew