What it takes to teach...

Let me start this out by saying I love Caleb. And I love my first graders. If these two statements were false, the majority of my time would not currently be consumed with wedding planning and hanging out with / thinking about the first grade class with which I am student teaching.

Now let me tell you about my day.

Every once in a while, Caleb feels the need to vent, which is TOTALLY understandable. We all have to do that sometimes. And yes, he did have a rough day: he's working with his not-favorite judge all week and said judge made him work through lunch because he decided it would be cool to never end the morning session of court but just continue hearing cases into the afternoon. But still, Caleb got to leave work at, oh, what time? Four o'clock. An hour early. As he was venting about how awful his day was (and I am admitting it's not the best day ever) all I could think was,

"Were you sitting down to eat lunch as a first-grader threw up on your hands, not only COMPLETELY grossing you out but also removing all desire to eat, ever? Hmm? No? That's what I thought."

"Did your day start with a first-grader making a repulsed face while asking what's on your eye and then telling you that 'teachers aren't allowed to wear make-up'? Yeah."

"After all that, did you then take these precious first-graders out to recess only to find that some hooligans had spray-painted the playground equipment with bright orange misspelled cuss words?"

"And during recess did you watch two of your boy students run and full-out tackle a girl in your class?"

So if anyone ever tells you that teaching is easy, do me a favor and drop-kick them. Hard. Don't get me wrong, because as I said earlier, I LOVE LOVE LOVE my first-graders. I look forward to spending five days a week with them in the spring semester. Some think I am insane, and maybe I am, but I love them. I'm just sayin' teachers have days like this.