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"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Out of sheer personal curiosity and for no clear objective-meeting reason, I posed this question to my students a handful of weeks ago.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Other than just learning more about my students' ambitions and passions, I'm not really sure what I was looking for with this exercise.

Did I want a pat on the back or credit for the things my students would go on in life to accomplish? Not necessarily. 

Did I want confirmation of what I already knew about my students' goals - the far-fetched ones and the practical ones alike? Possibly.

Was I prepared for what I heard next? No, not at all.

Aside from my boys that wanted to become professional Halo gamers/testers, I had a good portion (dare I say 2/3) of my class say they wanted to be….. wait for it…. a TEACHER when they grew up.

Wow. Perhaps, God's using me to do something right in the lives of these kids, so that they want to grow up and be a TEACHER just like ME. Or perhaps, they're all just bossy little stinkers and like the idea of having no homework and telling everyone else what to do. hah. The world may never know. I think it may be best to leave that part up for personal interpretations.

But, believe it or not, the 2/3 majority of my students wanting to be a teacher when they grew up wasn't the most interesting part of that conversation.

What happened next was.

As we were sitting criss-cross-apple-sauce on the reading carpet and giving our answers in a circular fashion, the student to my right finished his answer. So, naturally, I looked to my student on the left (thinking that MY answer to the question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" was pretty obvious).

I was wrong.
Way wrong.

The student to my right said, "No, Miss Hill. Now it's your turn."

Ummm………….awkward silence.

To clarify, I asked him, "You mean, what do I want to be when I grow up?!?"

"Yes." He was serious, too.

As I looked at the faces of my little darlings, I noticed they were all awaiting - anticipating, even - my answer.

Surprisingly, I wasn't sarcastic or even the slightest bit sassy with my answer to them.
I was gut-level honest in what I said next:

"I love teaching you guys and thought that's what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I also really love to write. I think one day I want to 'grow up' to be a writer…like an author… of a book."

And as crazy as that sounds…. guess what? They were okay with it. One little girl even requested two copies of my first book. One for her, and one for her mom.

While the memory of that conversation on that day really makes my heart smile, my curiosity still lingers….

What is it you REALLY want to be when you grow up?
The kid in you and the kids around you believe you can do it.

Start today.
And stop at nothing.

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