I’m sitting in my classroom at 7:45am, the sun is streaming into our room, I’m carefully drawing with oil pastels onto a carefully cut out black square of construction paper. “Neat,” I think to myself, “These pastels look great on dark paper.” At that moment a security woman comes in to perform a routine sweep of the room. We exchange “Good mornings.” She checks the buzzers and devices and checks in with her walkie talkie. Than she looks at what I’m doing and sighs, “I wish I could do that all day.” I realize that she is admiring my colored squares of oil pastel, and instead of being defensive, (”You think I color all day? When? In between separating two fighting kids while dealing with bloody snot? Well, I’ll tell you what, coloring is the last thing I get to do!”), I was reflective. OK, so sometimes I get to hang out and listen to stories and color with markers and talk about how the number one worst sickness is throwing up. This is a good job, a challenging job, one that is different and engaging. Sure, I walked in and immediately longed for the end of the day when I could relax and eat dinner with Josh (while watching Top Model or American Idol). Sometimes it’s give, give, give all day long. But many times it’s just me hanging out while kids talk about books or play with legos or tell me how they’re feeling. There are days when I walk by the security car out in the parking lot and I envy the luxury of being able to sit and listen to transmitters all day. But then I reflect back to my time in retail when my mind would hunger for a challenge, some really interesting work. The thing with teaching is that when it’s good, it’s really fantastic…the great moments may be few between but they are so spectacularly high that it’s hard to forget them when I reflect on leaving this profession. It’s like watching a kid learn to read, and they’re trying and trying and one day they suddenly identify themselves as a reader (”I’m reading! I’m reading!” The Screamer blew out my eardrums the other day.) What else can I say? Witnessing that moment is very, very cool.