I had a student visit me at lunch the other day.

Let’s call him Robert.

Robert was in my class for two years. Now, in my class, you were expected to come to class and participate by singing. That’s what we do in a choir class, we sing. And when I tell people that I teach choir, I get one of two responses:

1. “OH! Like Glee!”

2. “What fun! All you have to do is sing all day long!”

And I smile at them, because it’s not worth spoiling the delusion.

Now don’t get me wrong. Much of what happens in a music class is joyful, and artful, and beautiful. There wasn’t a day in my 8 years in music education that I didn’t experience the bliss of hearing my students make magic.

And I lived for it.

And I live for it still.

Sometimes, the magic was a melody or a harmony. Mostly, though, it was an expression. It isa realization that I share with a student: we are both human, and that there was very little else in the world that would unite us more than that moment. Moreover, the moment meant that we both had more to learn. That’s where the magic lies, in the realization that, as people, none of us are done learning, and all of us have something to teach.

So back to Robert. My first days with Robert were quite hopeful. I taught his sister a few years earlier and she had been a remarkable student. She had gone on to college and was well on her way to a successful life in the medical industry. So my expectations for Robert were similar.  Right off the bat, I knew that he was a bright and insightful. And boy was he eager! He wanted my attention and he wanted it NOW. He loved to dance, and he loved music. I was excited for the things he would teach me, and the possibility of what I could teach him.

It’s rarely that simple, though.

Robert would spend the next two years in and out of offices. First it was my office. Then it was the principal’s office. Then it was the police station. Then a probation officer. Suddenly, Robert’s priorities weren’t break-dancing and basketball. I was amazed how quickly his attention turned to making money, finding a job, and getting out of school. Robert became a “problem kid.” He became a burden to the classroom. You see, he was still bright and insightful. He was still eager. But now he was also obstinate. And angry. Being a criminal is expensive, especially when you’re 16.

It would be easy for me to write him off, as many of the adults in his life did. But I couldn’t. The magic had already happened. I had seen him at his best. I knew who he was underneath the trappings hoisted on him by the world. So I fought to help him chip away at that exterior and find who he was. He never sang much, but he read a lot. He would download Aristotle, and John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson on his phone. Each day he had some new thought to discuss with me about the world. He also had some horrible story about a probation officer, or one of his pot-smoking buddies, or, sadly, about another teacher. He was a pain. He always had been. He was NOT his sister. But he was himself. With all of his flaws, and all of his challenges, there was something remarkable about him.

Our time together became much less about making music, and much more about his future. He had very little guidance at home. His family was too busy to deal with a problem child and continue to struggle with abject poverty. Their continued survival became a bigger priority than their son’s future. So Robert and I talked about college. We talked about working. We talked about the difference between a job and a career. He asked me about Aristotle, and John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson. And he taught me so much.

Robert is a senior now and has gone on to bigger and better things. He is working in a pharmacy tech program and applying to get a job at a local pharmacy. He plans on going to school next year to work in medicine, just like his sister. His struggles are far from over, but when he came to visit me during lunch the other day, his eyes looked a little less weary than they have in a while. There was hope. There was magic.

Teaching is hard. For every two model students there are a hundred others. Some of them are a mild challenge. Some of them make you want to run from the room screaming. There is so much to teach them and almost no time to do it in. There isn’t any money. There isn’t enough space. And everyone is mad at you. There are tests, and parents who yell, and stressed out administrators that are just as overworked as you are. There are 14 hour days, and 6 day weeks, and “vacations” where you work as much as you do when school is in session. And, as Rita Pierson says, “we come to work when don’t feel like it, and we listen to policy that doesn’t make sense…”

“…and we teach anyway.”

We teach because we have to. Educators are educators because they have to be. Teachers get a job. Educators change the world. Not because they want to. Not because they have to. Because we need to.

Robert wishes he could be in choir class this year. He told me so at lunch. It’s not because we get to sing every day. It isn’t because it’s like Glee. Robert comes to choir class for the same reason I get up at 5:30 every morning and drive to school.

The magic.

I am lucky. Being a music teacher never made me lucky. It wasn’t because I “got to teach a subject the kids actually liked.” It doesn’t matter if you’re teaching choir, or dance, or math models, or AP lit, or world geography.

We don’t teach subjects.

We teach people.

And they teach us.

THAT is why I get up at 5:30 in the morning. THAT is why I do this job for not enough money and for not enough time and for not enough thanks. Because that moment at lunch that Robert and I share is worth all the gold in Solomon’s temple. It’s my national monument. For every 300 “challenging” kids I get to teach, I only need a moment. How much magic do you want, anyway?