Teaching School: Getting in Touch with Myself

Teaching school helps me to be more in touch with myself. In saying that, what I really mean to say is, "Kindergartners have a wonderful way of pointing out all of my quirks and imitating everything I say." That scares me.
Yesterday, my whiteboard marker ran out of ink. Without a second thought, I made a comment to the effect, "This marker's fired!" and threw it away. I don't remember saying this, and I would probably claim that I didn't except that today, it happened again. I told the children, "My goodness, my marker must be out of ink." That's when the children asked me, "Is the marker fired?"
"What?" I asked. I was totally confused.
"Is the marker fired? Do you need to throw it away?"
So, that marker was fired too, and currently, we're accepting applications for new markers. You can contact me if you know of any that may meet the qualifications.

Today, though, I was paid a big compliment by a child. His grandmother came to pick him up and told me that he had told his family, "When we do something wrong, Miss Parrish doesn't get mad. She just tells us to try it again."
That is another phrase that I use a lot without even realizing it, but I'm glad I do... because I hope that all of my children can have that attitude: doing it wrong doesn't make me bad. It just means I need to try it again. (Some of the children may have also realized, though, that you may need to try it again about 1400 billion times. :)

Lucky for me though, this also helps me get to know the students' parents as well. The other day, I was trying to get the attention of a child to get in line. He wasn't listening or hearing what I had to say, so I used both his first and last name to get his attention. That didn't work. So, I went up to him and asked him, "Did you hear me calling your name? It's time to get in line." To which he responded, "You didn't use my middle name." Note to self: learn middle names.