"My pencil went to heaven"

I've decided that working with kids is fun. It's probably good to realize that right now just about a week before my job ends. I guess it's easy to feel nostalgic about a tough job when you know you're leaving soon.

It's been challenging, exhausting, exasperating, but in the end, I've enjoyed it. Kids have way more personality than a computer, that's for sure. There are also several reasons why I don't love working with kids in the context that I'm working with them, but let's concentrate on the positive.

Reasons why I love working with kids:

a) i get to read all the kids books i want and feel accomplished because i read about 6 books just during lunch. also i discovered that chocolate chippo hippo is one of the greatest book titles in all of history.
b) three words baby: arts and crafts
c) i feel tall, if only sometimes (there are a few fourth graders taller than me, but who's surprised)?
d) i feel smart, if only sometimes (i relearned how to carry over when subtracting and how to do long division)
e) i get to drink the milk the kids waste. my favorite is strawberry
f) power and control
g) creativity overflows! we made costumes out of cardboard!
h) toilet humor never gets old
i) good stories, good memories, and an idea for what I want to do (and don't want to do) with the rest of my life. (i.e. the title of this blog post is the answer one of my kids gave me when I asked him where his pencil was)
j) almost everything is amusing, fascinating, and exciting.

I realize that I am just a blip in the lives of these kids, but this experience has meant so much to me and contributed a lot to my development this year. It's so weird to think of these kids in 13 years, when they are my age. I wonder how many of them will start a band, pursue art, become activists, entrepreneurs, explorers, scientists, engineers. I wonder how many of them will make it to high school. I wonder how, if at all, I influenced them. I wonder whether or not they will look back on the third grade as a great year, as I do now of both my own third grade year and theirs.

I'll come back to visit.