Compassion

Both my mom and my dad are elementary school teachers, and they are very involved with the students of the whole school and their individual classroom. A few years ago my dad had a young boy in his class who did not have the best home life. His mother worked two jobs just to help them scrape by, and his dad was an alcoholic who had recently been sent to jail. Around Christmas time my dad had the class write a letter to Santa telling him what they wanted for christmas. My dad was walking around the room and looking at each students list and when he came to this particular boy his paper was blank. My dad asked him why he had not written anything down and the boy had replied that his mom had told him that they wouldn't be able to afford christmas presents this year and he felt bad asking for presents. After school that day my dad discussed this situation with my mom, and the both of them came up with an idea. My parents called the young boy's mother and asked if there is any way they could help out this year. At first the mother was hesitant, but then she thought of her children not having a Christmas and she agreed. So on Christmas morning my parents came to the family's home with a bunch of gifts for the family. My parents said the joy on the kid's faces was one of the best things they had ever seen.
The compassion my parents showed for this student was a great thing and being able to impact a child's life like they did really reassured me that teaching was what I wanted to do with my life.

Respect

My junior year of high school I was in math class one day and the class had finished the assignment for the day and we were all sitting around discussing the boys basketball game from the previous night. The team suffered a big loss in the last seconds of the game and it was partly based on a decison the coach made in the final seconds of the game, well that coach was my dad. Although I did not agree with the coaching decision my dad had made, I still was trying to defend his decision. One of my friends and I were debating back and forth about it when my teacher decided to join in on the discussion. He said that the descision made by the coach was idiotic, and he was a horrible coach and responsible for the team's loss. I feel like this was a very disrespectful comment to make because not only was I, the coach's daughter, in the class, but I feel like in situations like that where it concerns another teacher or coworker someone should not share those comments with others in the workplace, especially with students.