What I Like About Teaching

It's 9:00pm on a Sunday, and it's about this time every week when I begin to dread the coming school week. As much fun as it is to sit and stew in my despair over my job teaching, I figured it wasn't a very productive or mentally healthy exercise. Besides, I only have 60 hours left of my vacation and I'll be damned if I'm spending them moping about going back to school. So without further ado, a list of things I actually enjoy about teaching:

1. The vacation time. It's frequent, and it's lengthy. Also, I get 10 sick days.
2. Being the smartest person in the room. It's hard not to be the smartest person in the room when you are surrounded by small children, but still it's a nice feeling. Me and the Pope have an infallibility thing going on.
   
3. The pity/admiration you receive from others. I've never had a job that is so positively received. Most people say kind things about my choice of profession, though mostly people say things like "Wow, that sounds hard."
4. Being able to completely understand everything that my favorite student says, event hough he speaks in broken English AND has a speech delay. Seriously, it's an accomplishment.
5. The off-the-charts cuteness factor. I still prefer puppies to human young, but my students are pretty cute.
   
6. My students are so gullible that I generally only have to talk in an excited tone to get them to be excited too.
   
7. My approval really means something to my students. Disappointing me is an awful feeling, or so I gather.
   
8. My students are so little that just about any activity is educational. Seriously -- even doing crafts with cutting is a useful activity as it helps students build their fine motor skills.
   
9. My students are excited to learn. When I say, "You are wasting your own learning time" they get upset.
   
10. My students are genuinely good kids. One of my kids choked a student, and 3 other students jumped into the fray to stop the fight. All of my students are eager to help each other -- almost to a fault.