"Oh my God, I LOVE it"

I. Love. Children. Preferably small ones that aren't all bitter and bruised yet. First grade is pretty much perfect for me because the kids are old enough to have an eensy bit of a clue as to what school is all about. However, they are still young enough to remember what life is all about, sharing crayons, checking on a friend when they fall down, and laughing as loudly and often as possible.

For example, one of my students can do math in his head already...which is pretty awesome for a six year old that is learning in his second language. BUT me being the terrible mean old teacher that I am, I made him use the number line anyway to check his answers. He was so excited by the fact that his answers matched that halfway down the page he became so overjoyed he could no longer contain himself and screamed out "Oh my God, I LOVE it" in the middle of the classroom.

Hey, my fellow college graduates, remember when learning was fun?

Of course, most of the funny things that happen in my room have nothing to do with what we are actually studying and more to do with childhood in general.

Take, for example, the cutsy calendar accessory I have covering the 18th of January...MLK Jr.'s birthday...a small cutout with a picture of him on it that simply states....Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. However, every single one of my kids thought Obama was on our calendar. And surely that meant that he would be visiting our school on the day that his picture was on.

I tried to disarm the situation, lest angry republicans and/or Obama supporters show up to rally at our school on January 18 (a day that (might have) lived in infamy). However, I'm still pretty sure that some of my kids will go home and report to their parents that Obama is coming to visit.

I mean, teachers make a lot of fuss about all the things they have to get done and lord knows it's true. We are overworked and underpayed....but maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it weeds out most of the people who don't really want to be there.

But it's not the things we complain about or the money that keeps us going back everyday...and, I promise, we are not gluttons for punishment.

It's because no matter how much we put in, no matter how tired we are, no matter how much of our money we spend on our classrooms...the kids give us way more back.

They give us perspective.

and a sense of humor.