You Know You’re a Teacher When
by Patrice Plumadore
written for the 2012 Invitational ELL Summer Institute
You can eat your lunch while hovering over a copy machine, computer, or laminator, and feel relieved that you finally got that “break”
You go home with glue in your hair, glitter on your face, play-doh in your shoes, and half a dozen random objects in your pocket that you were handed by/took away from students
That early dismissal you looked forward to all week was way less fun than an afternoon with your students would have been
You can figure out how to get seven hours of instruction, breakfast, lunch, recess, and two trips to the bathroom into a 7-hour day
You have friends that think you are “living the dream” with two months off in the summer, but you know better
Working 8-3 is really something more like 7-5, plus a few hours at home
You can read upside down, but there’s often no need to even see the page since you’ve memorized most stories
You can take 30 kids to the zoo, and still have fun
You refer to each and every one of those kids as yours, even when they disappoint you, annoy you, disobey you or move on to the next grade
You feel the need to discipline other people’s children in public
You “shush” people
At any given moment in a day, you find yourself singing the song of the week
You save absolutely everything, and often ask relatives and friends to save random objects that would otherwise be thrown away
You sneeze into your elbow
You go home from work exhausted, but with a great feeling that you made a difference in the life of a child
You can get multiple degrees, certifications, and professional titles, and still think there’s more that you need to learn to be able to reach all of your students
Patrice Plumadore teaches the ELL-friendly kindergarten class at Willard Elementary in Kensington. Patrice attended the 2008 ASTELL program and the 2012 Invitational ELL Summer Institute sponsored by the Philadelphia Writing Project.
Patrice wrote the poem when she was (avoiding) working on her Theory of Teaching and Learning assignment for the Invitational ELL Summer Institute. She thought about all of her experiences as a teacher and things that she knows we all, as teachers, experience that make us who we are.
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