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21 Things I Learned from Teaching Kindergarten

I have been teaching Kindergarten for the last month. I decided I needed to write down some of the things that I learned during this time. Enjoy!

1. Any job that involves handing out snacks twice a day is the job for me!
2. If you have a runny nose, you are not sick enough to miss school. It means that you will be blowing your nose twenty-bajillion times a day, but you will still stand up in front of the class and teach.
3. Wearing a name tag does not make you a teacher. You still need to establish your role as a teacher and not as a friend.
4. Something will always go wrong. You can plan for hours and hours and then suddenly a kid will be crying in the back of the class and all of your plans go out the window.
5. Even when you are tough with children they still love you and will hug you at the end of the day.
6. 5 year olds are more self-conscious then you would think.
7. You will become an expert at tying a double knot in less than 5 seconds.
8. When you line up the children, there will always be a shoe that needs to be tied.
9. Children don't care how well or horrible you sing, they just think that it is fun that you sing!
10. Any song that you listen to at school will now be stuck in your head for days.
(I still can't get this song out of my head!!)
11. Children need to move. They can't sit still for long!
12. If you ask students to ask questions, you will hear more stories than questions.
13. Be careful who you call on during a lesson. Some students just raise their hands because they have a story to tell about how their grandma died last night. This just throws off the whole mood of your lesson.
14. If you tell students to answer in a loud whisper, they hear the loud part and not the whisper. Then they yell and you start laughing in the middle of your lesson.
15. You really can't know what to expect until you are in front of a class.
16. For the first week, all the children look the same. They all have the same hair and they have names that start with the same letter. You never think you will remember all of their names. But you will.
17. There will always be a spill to clean up after snack time.
18. You have a teacher voice. You don't realize that you do until you are in front of 25 5-year-olds.
19. Sometimes you will feel like you look like an idiot. But in the eyes of kids you look awesome. Soak in this feeling when you can.
20. You are going to be tired. Every single day. Every single moment. But it is worth it. The children make it worth it.
21. Hand Sanitizer is a gift from the gods. Use it. Use it often!

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