Top 10..ish

My students actually watch more Letterman than I do.. I'm usually asleep.

Well.. as the the first semester of the school year winds down and blessed Christmas arrives upon us, I thought it pertinent to contrive a brief listing a valuable insights that I have learned throughout this time.   Mind you, this is not by any means an exhaustive list. I would not be so bold.

10.. When given the choice between coloring with a 64 pack of crayons or a No. 2 lead pencil, students will pick the lead pencil every time.

9.. When given the choice between spilling the 64 pack of crayons vs the No. 2 lead pencil, students will pick the 64 pack of crayons every time.

8.. At the beginning of every POST- recess class, give the students time to dump those darn playground rocks out of their shoes. If you forget, they will end up on your head (I don't want to explain that one. Darn playground rocks).

7.. Teachers can often get away with murder, but heaven help you if you pronounce their name wrong. ("His name isn't DevAn its DevON!!"). If you want to get a student's attention, call them by the wrong name.

6.. Chances are that you will go to bed earlier than your students every night.

5.. There is a difference between an Nintendo DS and a Nintendo DSI. The only thing worse than getting their names wrong is forgetting the names of various Chinese-manufactured items.

4.. In November the 1st graders start to learn how to play the recorder in preparation for the Christmas Program. It takes a special person to listen to 35 recorders trying to play a "C" at 8:00am in the morning.

3.. You will get invited to birthday parties. The student's birthday, parent's birthday, grandparent's birthday.. I even got invited to a great aunt's birthday once. I was honored.

2.. 

The first hour of my last job (social worker): Get to work, put up my coat, get some coffee, check e-mails. Make small talk.

The first hour of being a school counselor: Get to work, put up my coat, check e-mails, make lesson plan copies, go to the bathroom because it's the only chance that you'll get for the next 6 hours, help crying lost 1st grader to class, help vomiting 1st grader to nurse,  find custodian to clean up, deflect hugs from a mosh pit of 1st graders as you run to find the custodian because you are now scared that he is missing, realize the custodian is outside on bus duty and that you will have to clean up the vomit, get over the fact that you have a master's degree and cleaning up vomit, ask the secretary where the "vomit sand" is, ask yourself where you came up with the word "vomit sand", ask yourself if maybe it was that master's degree that gave you the ability to make up such phrases, mentally pat yourself on the back, continue running through the halls (even though you tell them not to), on your way to find said "vomit sand" respond "I know"  several times when the 2nd and 3rd graders tell you that "someone puked".. realize that it has only been the first 15 minutes of your day and you have about 7 and half hours left as you run down the hallways in search of "vomit sand". 

1.. When they tell you that they love you 25 times a day, ask you if they look pretty with their new hair style, tell you that that were doing pretty rough until they talked with you, tell you that they decided to make the right choice instead of the wrong one, it's actually pretty neat.