My Job of new challenges

I am a teacher. I do love the passing on of information to the new generations. I delight in finding the ways all their minds work so I can ignite their curiosities. But it is really the challenge of making students (24 this year) become independent, confident thinkers. I am pretty good at this. Examples numbers one through four being my very own daughters. (See, I told you I excell.) Doing this without prescribing it to be done MY way is the challenge. That they all get to be themselves, in their own habitats and habits. Last year was a toughie, this year looks like it will be busy also but more rewarding due to some diversity to begin with.
I have always felt anticapation for the meeting of my fellow travelers in each year's mental and emotional journeys. I constantly fear that I will give too much guidance and they won't be making their own journeys. I dread those moments when they see me as mean because I don't help like other teachers have in their pasts. I squirm when someone states that my expectations are too high. It is difficult, this challenge of making them more through the curriculums demanded by state departments. But I know that anyone can teach himself alot. I realize that teaching a prescribed plan can be done by anyone who can read and follow directions with a bit of time management. But this, what I hope I do, is a mission. I regret that few do this.
My daughters know I give too much to my job. They dealt with the times I had little to give them at the end of a school day or week. (Thank you God for summers to make it up) My lover feels the lack of me as I push my fellow classmates. (A too messy house with a sleepy girlfriend by 9 in the evening) But to do less, is to be less and to make less. How senseless. So I teach.