I often get asked if I miss teaching. I do miss certain parts of it, but not all of it. I don’t miss grading papers. I hated that. It was always such boring, repetitive work. I also hated the process of calling in sick. You can’t just call in sick when you are a teacher. Whether you are sick or not, there is always a room full of kids waiting for you at the appointed time. If you needed to call in sick, you still needed to have something for the students to do. I always kept an emergency lesson plan in my top desk drawer so if I unexpecedly needed to miss one day, I was covered. If I needed to miss two days I was in trouble though. I remember at least once a year dragging my sorry, sick, self to school to put together a lesson plan for the students to do while I was out sick. On one occassion I had to bring a long a bucket in case I needed to throw up while I was there. Thankfully I didn’t need to use it.

So what do I miss? What I miss the most was interacting with the kids. Middle school kids are full of life. Things are always captivating when you have a room full of them.

By the way, I have a theory about middle school kids. My theory is that middle school kids get all of their energy by sucking it directly from all of the adults around them. That’s why the staff always looks exhausted at the end of the day.

–Pete