Since it is only 2 1/2 weeks until graduation for my preschool class I thought I would take a few minutes to reflect on why I love teaching! Teaching is rewarding in so many ways (excluding financial). It is truly a profession of the heart in my opinion. If you don’t love teaching you are not going to be any good at it. Some jobs allow you to go through the motions and be fairly successful but I don’t really see that to be possible in teaching.

Multiple personalities, multiple abilities, multiple different family backgrounds all melted into one classroom. A classroom in which we must “live” in harmony for an entire nine months! It isn’t always easy…or maybe even ever. It definitely requires passion and patience and flexibility but it offers so much in return.

Last week I was going through some papers that I have saved for an end of the year portfolio and found a perfect example of one of the reasons why I love teaching so much, and teaching preschool specifically. These are the years when you can see the progress made so clearly. From letter recognition to counting and everything in between, there is just so much growth that it is truly amazing. You don’t always notice it in the day to day hustle but when you pull out a paper from the beginning of the year and then you look at their current ability you can’t help but smile and be proud.

I also love seeing the creativity that the children still have. Too many times I see creativity being squashed by parents, teachers, and schedules. One of my favorite times of the day is free play because my students build incredible things and make up their own rules to old games and express themselves through drawing and other creative arts. I wish I would have taken a photo of the portrait of me that one of my students made a few months ago. It was fun to see how she sees me and also astonishingly creative that she glued a piece of paper to the back to signify my ponytail. How sweet! Here are a couple examples of my favorites from last week:

There’s no doubt I will miss these children dearly but it will be time to say goodbye soon. September will bring new students and the process will start all over again. I love watching these children grow and couldn’t be more proud of the things they have been able to accomplish this year. It’s not all academic either, some of our biggest accomplishments are not using nonsense words during the lesson and being able to express our feelings when we are upset instead of crying. I strive to be a well rounded teacher and when I see things like these I know I am doing my job!