When I received the call I was surprised and shocked at how fast my resume was received. It was around March 2008 when I was living in Ottawa. I was moving back to Edmonton and applied for an Education Assistant position with Edmonton Public Schools. As soon as I got back the interview was set up for the next day. When I applied the only experience I had was working in a daycare and a Montessori school.

After the interview and plenty of paperwork I got a call the next day offering me a temporary position at a school in the west end in a behavioural class. It was a 12 week contract in a classroom of eight children. From the description of the job, I felt confident going into the class and demonstrating my teaching skills.

Let me tell you, I was in for a rude awakening! Even though there were only eight children in the class, it felt like 100 because of all the things that were occurring in the classroom. Each child had a different learning ability, and to see the teacher reach out to every child by catering to their learning ability was amazing. Every day that I went to work I carried home a basket of knowledge. There is one particular day that sticks out vividly because it was my first emotional breakdown as a teacher.

It was well over five weeks into the position when this incident occurred. There was a boy with whom I had to walk to the crosswalk every day after school to make sure he was safe getting across the street. Usually the kids line up and wait, but on this day the boy decided to take off on his own. I was frantically searching for him in the school, then made my way out towards the crosswalk and that was where I found him.

He was already across the street and when I called out to him to wait for me he decided to run. He ran in the opposite direction of his home and I started a chase because I was not aware of the neighbourhood surroundings. When I finally caught up to him he didn’t want to cooperate and continued a chase. At this point I was really concerned about what he would do, so when I caught up with him again, I held on to his wrists across his body and sat him down on the ground. This was an angry eight year old boy fighting, head butting my chest, kicking, and wailing for me to let him go.

At the same time the other kids who were on the school bus were screaming out the window, “Don’t hurt him!” and “Let him go!” The bus driver saved me by calling the school and getting help. As the teacher got a hold on the boy he continued to fight. We all walked back to the school and that was when I started to tear up and become filled with utter sadness. I could not believe the amount of stress this little child was going through. Later on when we spoke with his mother we discovered he had witnessed a brutal beating of a teenage boy he knew a few days before in the neighbourhood.

From my experience in that classroom, I learned that every day is a new day, and we must move on by developing a thick skin and not taking things personally. To this day, I still wonder about the boy and hope that he is well and experiences great success in all that he does.

Robbin Lu works at Pacific Cafe (10874 97 Street) with her mother Nhan.