Christmas break has disappeared behind a pile of compare/contrast essays, journals, and persuasive essays. The school year has resumed, and the consequence of my inability to keep on schedule means I have in one weekend a pile of grading that I was intending to spend two weekends and the intervening week plowing through.

Plowing through — as if this were a drudgery. It’s the amount, not the work.

This week has forced me to reevaluate my career choice. Most would expect a paragraph that begins like that to end bemoaning the decision to go into education. My thoughts led to quite the opposite conclusion. Every now and then it occurs to me how fortunate I am to be doing what I love most: working with kids. Teaching is a privilege, an honor.

Most significantly, it is a position built around trust. Perhaps it’s not voluntary trust, and maybe it’s not trust in me personally, but public education is built on trust. One parent said told me, “You’re raising my child; you see him more than I do,” Parents hand their children over to me daily, believing that I will do my best to help their children grow — intellectually and even emotionally. I feel a surge of pride and honor every time I think of the role these parents trust me to play in their children’s life, and that’s why the piles of paperwork this weekend don’t phase me.

Ideally, there should be another relationship of trust in education: between teacher and student. If there is mutual trust, there must be mutual respect: it’s hard to trust someone you don’t respect, and vice versa.

I must have faith that, all variables being made equal, my students all want to learn. Some days it’s more difficult than others: those variables — parental support, presence of adult role models, family educational history (i.e., socioeconomic status) — have a resiliency that can be frustrating. But if I didn’t believe all students wanted to learn (not necessarily what I’m teaching, but simply learn), how could I go to work in the morning? It would be the ultimate Sisyphean task.

The trust my students must have in me is much more multi-faceted. If they’ve had several bad experiences with adults, I start already behind. If they’ve had less-than-effective teachers in the past, I start even further behind. So many ways to gain and lose their trust.

When working with thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, it’s a thin line of trust. They can have such a heightened sense of “fair,” and they often confuse fairness and equality.

How many of my students would say they trust me? Certainly not one hundred percent: it’s not a perfect world, and I’m not a perfect teacher. I can honestly say, though, that a good number trust me to keep their best interests in the forefront of all we do. Even in moments of classroom management crisis (e.g., acting out),