I love to teach because I don't have to think.

Wait, wait, wait…before you close this page, never to open it again because you think I’m one of those crazy “if you can’t do, teach” kind of people, hear me out.

What I mean, is that when I teach, I am so busy planning, creating, assessing, cajoling, consoling, observing, redirecting, focusing and all the other -ing words you can think of, I have no time to think about the things that bother me. I can direct all of my energy completely and wholeheartedly into a bunch of people who may or may not want to hear me, but who will benefit from me. And it’s liberating to do it.
 
Last year around this time, I was having a miserable day—you know the kind—mid-February blahs, kids fighting about who gets to say which line of the play we were reading, other kids swearing and drawing on the tables, basketball games canceled, six kids directing me in six directions all at the same time and one of them my son…and then I sat down and spoke to one student all by himself. I looked him in the eye and talked about the lesson we were working on.
And he stopped me and said, “you love to teach, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I can see it. One minute your fangs were showing and the next minute, you’re teaching me something and it’s like you’re a different person.”
“Oh. Well, thank you.”
Today, it was my third period losing their MINDS after lunch. I'm not sure what they ate, or what they did, or why they were so nuts, but I could not corral them to get them to think about poetry. THEN, I couldn't spell "unmistakable." I tried it "unmistakeable." They teased me mercilessly. Mind you, these are the kids I had to add a bonus 5 points to get them to spell things correctly on a quiz...
One kid tried to make it better by reminding me, "well, they both have a mistake in them..." And another smirked as he said, "it should have 's-t-e-a-k' in it." You gotta love 'em.

So, I do love to teach. It’s in my blood. It's hard to step away from it, for sure. The kids make it worth it. They are the ones who make it something I enjoy--even when I'm directing traffic and herding cats. Thanks kids.