Some happiness

I've been pleasantly reminded how much I love my job these last two days. I don't know why, but breaks aren't productive. I always dread going back, but once I'm there I love it all over again.

Yesterday, when my observer from downtown showed up, one of my most disruptive students mumbled to the class "be good today guys, don't get Ms Szilagyi in trouble, that lady's here to observe her." It was so sweet. And truly, he restrained himself a lot for the next 30 minutes.

Today, each of my classes made me chuckle. It's fun to teach kids about propaganda because they pick up on the most obvious things. Commercials I often overlook. Each class brought up SHAM WOW. One boy shouted out "viagra, they share that (slight voice change) 'if you experience an erection for more than 4 hours you need to -" He didn't get to finish. I think we all knew where he was going with this one, and though he was right and I appreciated the extra special humor added to class, I wanted to make sure we didn't start a full blown discussion on the adverse effects of viagra.

The best part was, as I was putting together a sample of the student's work from the day, I included the viagra. This is a boy who has turned in very little work, and I want to reward all his accurate attempts to understand our lessons. So somewhere amongst nearly 200 post-its hanging on my back wall, you will find the word viagra. I hope he notices the reward.

There are a lot of other funny things they do. I can't think of a job where I might laugh more. Despite all its stresses, I'll keep it.