You Know You're a Teacher When...

In ACE, again and again, you hear the phrase "You know you're a teacher when..." Sometimes this statement is completed with things like...

"...when you get school supplies for Christmas."

"...when you use your college degree to figure out the most efficient way to staple papers."

"...when your fingers are consistently blue, black, or green from overhead markers."

"...when you are asleep before 9:00 on a Friday."

These things are often humorous. We laugh at our extreme work schedules, or the strange things our jobs sometimes call us to do (resolving extensive, week-long disputes over pencils, participating in lively debates regarding precisely what "dark-colored" socks means).

Really, though, it isn't the small hardships or adjustments in schedule or habits that make us teachers. Just a few weeks ago, I felt more like a teacher than I have in the past year and a half.

Every six weeks, my students are required to take computerized reading and math tests. These tests show us how much our students have grown over the course of the school year. Occasionally they go well, but often they do not: kids did not get the practice they needed, or maybe they get distracted during testing. When I most recently assessed my students, the growth was astonishing: some students had already experienced nine months of reading growth. Others had grown a year, two years, and three years.

I have no idea what happened or what pieces finally came together, but I couldn't contain my joy. In fact, I did not even wait to show the kids their scores. As I called the students back one by one, the reactions varied. Some kids were elated and asked me to e-mail their parents who would not believe the kids' reporting. Others simply nodded and returned to their desks. 

The lack of reaction did not faze me, though. I do not do this to get validation from Middle Schoolers (thank goodness).

At professional development seminars and other teaching events, we are reminded again and again that teaching has a larger hold on our way of life than many professions. This is true. But it is not spending weekends planning and grading; it is not shopping for over-the-top holiday outfits to make kids smile; it is not gazing dreamily at packs of multi-colored pens in office supply stores that makes me feel like a teacher.

What makes me feel like a teacher is the fact that spurts of personal and academic growth for kids that are not mine, and have no relation to me brings me truer and more lasting joy than a few extra hours of sleep, or marker-free fingers, or pre-stapled papers.