Mere words do not feed the friars.

I don't get paid a lot for what I do. Teachers, historically underpaid everywhere but especially so in North Carolina, are often heard to say that teaching is a calling, and that is exactly what it feels like. You give up a LOT of personal freedom when you become a teacher. Just imagine, if you can, a world where everyone looks to you for model behavior, a world where you can not anonymously shop in sweats without running into at least one or two students (or even worse, PARENTS, because at least the kids will let you know they see you.). Imagine picking up a bottle of wine at the store and having one of your students see you, just after you gave the class a lesson on the dangers of drinking. Yeah, I think you get the picture.

For this loss of freedom to live like slovenly alcoholics, we should be well paid ... but we aren't. Oh, sometimes we get recognition for our hard work but competition is fierce. Every teacher that has some success in her career has 10 behind her, hoping she fails. When I got Teacher of the Year, a few teachers (that wer ealso in the running, I might add) didn't talk to me for weeks because they didn't think I deserved it.

Whatever. I got TOTY, what of it? I have a nice shiny plaque in my living room to remind me that I had fewer enemies than anyone else at my school. I had a bad picture of me in the local newspaper. Footage of me accepting my plaque is still playing on the local free access channel, at least until the next TOTY luncheon. Big whoop.

Last November, I went to Intel training so that I could teach others to use the Intel tools. I spent 40 hours out of town to get the title of Master Teacher and a certificate ... oh and I had to recruit teachers that I would train within a year.

In February, I held a workshop for the other media coordinators in my county to show them how to use the tools. I know not everyone was happy that I was teaching the group. How did I get chosen, after all? I am just a media coordinator like them, and a new one at that.

I'll tell you how. Hard freakin' work. And it just paid off.

No, I didn't get a raise.

No, I didn't get a new job.

BUT ... I got an email this morning saying that Intel had chosen the winners of the spring laptop drawing. Out of all the Master Teachers that held training in the first quarter of 2006, they are giving away laptops to two Master Teachers. One lady in Mississippi and me.

Yup. I won a laptop.

This doesn't happen to me. I don't win things. I don't have nice things. I don't deserve this.

But maybe I do. I have worked hard this year. Maybe good things do come to good people. Maybe this is my pot of gold.

I get the feeling I'm not done yet.

(on the title: An Irish proverb that I thought applied pretty well.)