So blessed.

Since the end of the first semester draws near, it has become time for.... drumroll, please... teacher evaluations! Teacher evaluations consist of some standardized forms that are passed out to the students so that they can evaluate me, tell me what I am doing well, what could be improved upon, and so on.

I clearly remember filling out teacher evaluations at Westmont and it looks a bit different now from the viewpoint of the teacher. I could be pretty harsh sometimes, letting professors know what I liked and what I didn't like about the course. Perhaps the words "brutally honest" could be used. Now, as I have been preparing myself to be evaluated, I have felt a little sick to my stomach. I have tried so hard to be a good teacher and to give my students every opportunity to do well. It made me nervous to be in a vulnerable position where my fragile self-confidence in my teaching abilities could be shot down.

I passed out my first two sets of evaluations to my freshman classes and waited, nervously, for them to fill them out and return them. The instructions are all in Thai so I couldn't read them, but I could read the comments that the students wrote on the back. Here are some examples of the comments they wrote:

"Very good for teaching."

"Nice teacher."

"She try to explain when the students don't understand."

"She patients in students so much."

I was so moved by what some of them wrote that I got a little teary-eyed as I was reading them. I cannot explain the affirmation I feel by seeing that they gave me such high ratings and wrote incredibly kind comments. In all honesty, I went into this job having no idea what I was doing, and to get such positive feedback from my students means so much to me. Now I could care less what the department thinks of me; if the students learned something and felt the class was worth their time, that is all I need. Really.

These past few months have confirmed my career path in education. I have discovered that I love teaching. I do, I love it. I love being in front of a classroom, I love it when students are engaged and are thinking, I love when I can visibly see them understand something. I don't love the material I am teaching here at CMU, but if I could teach my own literature classes... wow. I'd be a lucky girl.

I don't know if I even realize the importance of this revelation. I am blessed by God that I would have an opportunity to use my gifts and that I could identify my strengths so soon in such a concrete way. More and more I realize that my Father prepared this place for me, prepared this year at this university in this country; He is faithful to me time and time again. To God be the glory.