This past week a friend asked me to write a job description for an elementary school teacher. This job description will be added to an informational book for middle and high school students to explore possible careers. More specifically, this book will be available to first and second generation Latino immigrants through the Mixteca Organization (you can visit their website at www.mixteca.org) aiming to help motivate these students to pursue more education and get started on a career. Truly, it was hard to summarize my job in one page because the daily events are so varied and often unanticipated. However, thinking about my job teaching children and as another school year is coming to a close, it got me thinking about all the reasons I love being a teacher. Here are some of my job highlights along with the top first grader quotes from my three years as an educator.
Top 10 Job Highlights
10. Fun celebrations such as apple day, Halloween, the Thanksgiving feast, school-wide turkey gobbling contest, decorating gingerbread houses, the 100th day of school celebration, magical mitten day, pretending there were leprechauns in the classroom on St. Patrick's Day, Easter egg hunt, etc.
9. The funny things the kids say daily.
8. Unexpected events that keep me on my toes all day long (i.e. lost teeth, bathroom breaks, blood, or visitors).
7. Helping a student that was hard to reach.
6. When students say they love coming to school and learning!
5. Watching students beam after they have been given a compliment and done something great.
4. The kids' hugs, their simple (and sometimes undecipherable) notes, and yes, even the dandelion weeds they bring in thinking they are real flowers.
3. Having students run into the classroom with exciting news from home or funny stories they can hardly wait to divulge.
2. Teaching students to read, watching them enjoy reading and get excited about certain books and authors.
1. Showing parents how much their child has learned and progressed during the school year.
Funniest quotes from 1st graders
(While there is not room to write all the funny things my students have said, here are a few funny quotes.)
- When our class was talking about maps and learning about the equator, a sports enthused boy raised his hand and asked, "Is the equator kind of like the line of scrimmage?"
- One morning we were checking our daily review. A part of it shows a sentence with mistakes that the kids have to find and fix. One boy found the word "we" misspelled. He said, "We is misspelled. It should be wii." (maybe a few too many video games for him!)
- A little girl last year started bringing me small apples to school every day. This continued for a few days before the number of apples started to increase. One morning she came to school and said, "Hi Miss Anderson. I brought you something." She continued to pull apples from her coat pockets until there were ten sitting on my desk!
- A particular boy in my class this year is quite the comedian. One day at recess he ran up to me and said, "Miss Anderson, for a long time I thought fish burgers were made out of chicken. But I just realized that they are made out of fish, and I don't really like fish!"
