Teaching Is...

3 March 2010

• Realizing that you’ve used a 10g flat weight from your student’s scales as a bookmark for the book you’ve been eagerly reading during DEAR time throughout book week.
• Coming home and emptying your pockets of: unifix cubes, starbucks (reward system in my classroom), pencil erasers (were getting played with), pieces of crayons (instead of getting thrown at someone at the next table…)
• Getting super-excited over a package containing new, and very needed, testing materials for the SPED department.
• When asked about ideas for packages, asking for beeping timers from the Dollar Tree in the States because they’re the best kind to use in the classroom.
• Finding a sudden urge to clean house on a weekend when report cards are waiting to be done.
• Enjoying the fact that, in Africa, pencils come pre-sharpened in the package!!!

• Missing the big rolling laminators in the States, and the Teaching Dollar Tree, and dye-cut machines. Plus, pre-made bulletin boards (the shiny kind) and pre-cut letters to post on the wall. (Did you know they don’t have Elison Dye Cut machines in England? Insanity, I know!)
• Getting more excited about going to the Tegeta Friday used-clothing market because you can get plastic prizes for your prize box for super-cheap than the excitement for the cheap clothes!
• Knowing exactly how many columns and rows are needed for the rubric you’re making on the computer, automatically without even thinking.
• Colored Pens.
• Watching a YouTube video and thinking, “This will fit in perfectly with my unit next week!!!” Then grading papers while waiting 20 minutes for each subsequent SchoolHouse Rock video to load so I could decide which one to use about weight, mass, and gravity.
• Having a sincere appreciation for – and desire to collect – sticky notes. And pads of paper. Especially cute ones.
• Looking forward to pajama day all year long – more-so than the kids.
• Being excited when I get to have grown-up-conversations, sit in grown-up-sized chairs, and use grown-up-sized sinks.
• Knowing the best ways to stick things to any sort of cement or plaster wall – and standing by your methods with a vengeance.
• Knowing that a class-full of whisper-voices will never actually come out as a whisper.
• Waking up, being sick, and deciding it’s less work to go into the classroom than create sub plans, find a sub, and clean up the chaos afterwards.
• Having an acute knowledge of which children’s books are best for teaching shapes, sharing, super-cool vocabulary, and punctuation.
• Being able to spot ring-worm, chickenpox, pinkeye, and a real headache from a classroom away, with one hand on the phone to call home… yet also knowing how to watch kids at recess to prove when they’re faking it!
• Being a nurse; a psychologist; a conflict-solution advisor; an eye, ear, nose, and throat diagnoser and pediatrician; referee; librarian; mom; comforter (of hurt bodies, feelings, and wounds from the world); caterer and provider of lost snacks; detective and search agent for all things missing; diagnostician; expert of all trades and abundant provider of knowledge; artist; friend; knowledge looker-upper and question-answerer; choir-director and drama coach; planner and strategizer; molder-of-minds; disciplinarian; model; expert problem-solution advisor and juggler of questions, requests, discoveries, problems, issues, hugs, hurt feelings, headaches and stomachaches, and all things kid – with joy and passion – during your break.

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