I ran into two of my former students today.
Not at a reunion. Not at a formal anything. At a carnival for enrollment at our school. Just out in the world, living their lives, six years after I last saw them in a classroom. They came up to me. We talked. They told me about where they are now, what they're doing, who they've become.
They were fine. More than fine.
They made it.
I think about this a lot. The part of teaching nobody talks about enough. You get a kid for a year, maybe two. You pour everything into that window of time. You see them at their most awkward, their most uncertain, their most unfinished. Then they move on, and you move on, and you teach seventy-five more the following September. Sometimes a name slips. Sometimes a face blurs.
But some of them you carry with you. The ones who needed something extra. The ones who were in the middle of something hard when they were yours. The ones you wondered about long after the school year ended.
I remembered these two vividly. They remembered me too.
That is my why. Right there. That moment at a carnival, or in a hallway, or wherever it happens. When a kid you poured yourself into shows up whole. That is the whole reason.
This week, I spent a lot of time working on our ThriveED platform, specifically a tool called Mindful Reset. It's built to help teachers refocus. As I was editing it, I kept coming back to something I know from my own classroom experience. After a long, stress-inducing day, I have to remind myself of a few things.
The kid who is acting out is communicating. They don't have the tools yet. They're not giving you a hard time. They're having a hard time. That's a different thing entirely.
Then I think about the other ones. The kid who smiles the moment something clicks. The one who runs up and hugs you in the hallway like you're the best part of their morning. The one who walks around all day with that enormous grin and doesn't even know how much it carries the room. The ones who say please and thank you without being reminded. The ones who really, genuinely try. Not because someone is watching, but because something in them just wants to get it right.
Those kids exist in every classroom. Even the hard ones.
This week also marks graduation season. Schools across the country are watching students cross a stage, shake a hand, and step into whatever comes next. Some of those graduates had a teacher who believed in them before they believed in themselves. Some of them are the first in their family. Some of them almost didn't make it.
Every single one of them had someone who showed up.
To the people entering this profession right now: I am endlessly impressed by you. Education is a field built on serving others. You are walking into it knowing full well what it asks. Some of you will work a second job to stay in it. Some of you will carry it home every night. Some of you will cry in your car in the parking lot and then walk back in and smile anyway.
You are choosing this on purpose.
I want you to know something before you walk into that first classroom. The kids who are difficult right now? They'll be fine. The ones who made you wonder if you were getting through? They'll come back and find you someday. In a hallway. On the street. In a message you weren't expecting.
They remember. They always remember.
Teaching seventy-five kids a year, year after year, it's easy to lose track. The sheer volume of lives passing through your room makes that inevitable. But the impact doesn't disappear just because you can't see it. It's out there, walking around, becoming something.
Today reminded me of that.
This is my why. I hope it's yours too.