"Hello, Ms. Bruns?"

So I'm sitting in my office reading page 128 of Educational Foundations: An Anthology of Critical Readings and I get to the part at the bottom that says, ""Why am I a teacher, anyways?" I pause from reading and drift off into the realm of deep thought. I know why I am a teacher, but I begin to examine the way I taught last year and if I taught from my heart or I taught from mandates, stress, and all the other excuses that cloud teachers mind. At that moment, my phone rang. The number did not have a named saved with it. I let it ring a couple of times, I wonder who in the world is calling me on a Wednesday evening in the summer. I answer.

"Hello, Ms. Bruns?" I can tell it's a kids voice. I say "Hi." And I hear this little voice say, "do you know who this is?" I admit that I did not. "Alyssa" I was so surprised to have a student calling me. We don't give out our personal cell phone numbers at our school, but I did to this mother for a field trip last September. The next words brought a large smile to my face, "I can't wait to see you again Ms. Bruns. Did you hear that I got in trouble over the summer? I scratched someone, I know it was wrong, but she pushed me over a chair and I got really mad, I won't go back to the support room again, you wouldn't have ever let the pushing happen, when does school start?" and the excited rambling continues. 

Now, completely side tracked from anything in the book or anything I had been thinking about, I look down, and I see that question again, "Why am I a teacher, anyways?" I feel like that student calling answers the question without saying anything at all.