Teaching, no greater call....except if I were called down on the Price is Right...that would definitely be greater...

Ratings for the month:
Derek's shoulder: 3/5 stars
Teaching: Two thumbs up!!
Marriage: A-okay!
Exercise: B+
Sanity: 86%
Number of Movies I've watched: Too much :)

For those of you who have never taught, the first month of teaching = mental insanity!! Getting a classroom, curriculum, and materials ready for all 26 students...The first month of school, I felt like a homeless woman, squatting in a 4th grade classroom. Every time I went to get into my classroom at an indecent hour, I was afraid someone who lived next to the school would see me and report a creepy lurker trying to get into the school at 2 am.

My class this year is a 180 degree flip from last year. This year they are....well....colorful. I sit at the end of the day reflecting on whether it would be ethical to duct tape kids to chairs, and how much tape it would take to keep lips shut and hands away from other students. I swear, someone must wait outside my classroom in the morning with caffeine and candy, because when they come in, they are reeeeediculous.

HOWEVER, and this is a big however (which is why I put it in all caps...) they are also so much more eager to learn and work hard than my class last year. I haven't heard one complaint from them about all of the work I give, and believe me, I give them A LOT of work. And truth be told, they are really cute...Rather than having a class full of "I wanna be popular and impress my friends" kids, my class is made up of misfits and mama's boys, and teacher pleasers, and and kids that are just plain crazy. At least they write "I love Mrs. Cami" 100's of time on the board, and use correct vocabulary when describing what we are learning in school to their parents ("Oh, the commutative law? That's where you switch the factors, but you still come up with the same product")and bring me cute gifts (Most recently the book "Guess who poops in the Colorado Plateau" because of a story I told the kids about finding a multi-colored dog poop outside my door and having to make inferences on what made it multi colored)...so even when I'm tired, I'm not really mad.

Plus, being a teacher, you laugh a lot. Little things make you laugh. I started tutoring kids after school, and there is this one boy who I tutor that cracks me up every time I work with him. While we were reading on Monday he came across a part of the story that talked about Elvis, and I asked "Do you know who Elvis is?"
"Uhhhhh yessssss" he told me
"Okay...who is he then?"
"Well his daughter married Michael Jackson"
I nearly died laughing...I never in a million years would have guessed that he knew that. It reminds me about when we were reading and the word "harpooner" came up. I asked him if he knew what it meant. "It's someone who harpoons something...like a whale. You know, like that story Moby Dick"; "What do you think Portuguese mean?" "The language people from Brazil speak"; "What does it mean to be dumbfounded? It usually happens when you don't know what to say because you are shocked". I swear, I can't stump the kid!!

Teaching may be under paid, over worked, and under appreciated by society on a whole, but nothing compares to the feeling you get when a student reads a story they wrote and rewrote and rewrote, that gives you goosebumps. Nothing compares to the feeling you get when that one student who could barely read on a 1st grade level is now reading on a 4th grade level because of you. Nothing compares to the feeling you get when you can't walk down the hall without being bombarded with hugs and high fives and "MRS. CAAAAMI!!!!" 's. Nothing compares to the feeling when a parent from the year before sends you enough grocery money to last you 3 months because you mean something to their family, and they knew you could use it.

So this is my blog. My blog of a teacher. Life may be crazy, but it's worth it (okay, most of the time it's worth it...sometimes I just wanna drop kick my desk). I'm just glad I teach fourth grade...where they're old enough to organize the supply cabinet, but young enough to want to.