I do know that teaching is the right profession for me and perhaps the only profession for me.

I have lived most of the vignettes in MAKING WAVES and if you're able to come and see the production, you will see that I have therefore lived many funny, quirky, entertaining moments. I have laughed so hard I had turn my back to students in order to compose myself.

And, I have also lived the sad ones. I'm still finding my own words to understand and describe some of those.

I have also left the profession, after my fourth year, thinking I couldn't keep doing this...forever. Surely I could make more money for less work. Surely I could sleep more and not worry so much. Surely I could find a job where my legs would not ache so much at the end of the day. But after two months in my new higher-paying profession, I started tutoring Elementary students in math, as a volunteer and within eight months I was sending resumes to various high schools.

Teaching feeds me. Interacting with words, books, ideas and sharing those with people of various ages, experiences, backgrounds...it is the greatest work I know.

And it is because of this work and because of Sadie, Alexa, Avery, Ethan J. H. B., Bracken, Davis, the Apostrophe Staff, the NDPA staff, the students of my past and the students of my future...and the teachers who taught me: Deborah Gomberg, Melanie Hahn, Kristin Cooley Johnson, Tiffany Swindlehurst, Kim Johnson, Katie Anderson, Chantal Esquivias, Desiree Smoot and so many others and the MAKING WAVES message and script that I take my own risk at acting.

I attend these late night rehearsals for them. I try a medium of stage acting for them. I fear feeling and looking foolish, but doing it anyway, for them. I struggle for them.

NICOLE ROBINSON (ENSEMBLE) Teenagers may be the most reasonable people I know. Innocent enough to trust and be vulnerable and also experienced enough to be skeptical.

In my 19-years of teaching Jr. High, High School and a University class here and there, I have learned to always tell the truth, but to also allow students to find his/her own truth. I have learned to answer every question asked, especially when the answer is "I don't know" and as a Writing teacher, I have learned that it is my job to help each student find his/her voice and to guide them in writing the pieces they want to write, more than teaching them to write what I want to read.

I have learned that Heminway, Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Cisneros, Neruda...all of them, wrote for the students I teach today and the students I will teach in ten years.

Currently I am learning and practicing this with 9th graders at North Davis Preparatory Academy and I love it. These students, as well as those I met from Hurricane, Orem, Ogden and Ben Lomond have helped me learn how to Make my own Waves and celebrate the success and suffer the losses with increased dignity. I thank them each for helping me become the teacher I am.