Teaching is haaaaard!

Resisting urge to write "you heard right." Resisting urge to write "you heard right."

Honestly, it is not that bad though, but most definitely much harder than I expected. More accurately, much harder than all those orientation sessions have led me to believe. All they seemed to want to tell me was "fun games this" and "lasting relations that" and "warm glow from a good deed" and all sorts of happy stuff like that.

However, no one ever seemed to feel the urge to teach me about how challenging this could be at times. For example:

1. What do you do when you ask a question to a student and then said student proceeds to spend the next minute (which will feel like an eternity) smiling at their desk thinking that this will make you go away?
2. What do you do when you when you have asked the class over and over if they understand, they say "yes" over and over, you walk around checking on them and asking them one by one if they understand, they all say yes, but when it comes time to show the fruits of their labor, it becomes painfully apparent no one understood you?
3. What do you do when you open it up to questions and some kid pops off with "what are your feelings on 9/11?"
4. What do you do when you where told to not prepare anything the day before, show up and everyone is expecting you to have a full on lesson plan ready to go.
5. What do you do when your whole class of students all want to take pictures with you and you really really have to go pee? Not just that, but have had to really really have to go pee for the past hour.
6. What do you do when all your students just point blank refuse to respond to anything you say to the class?

I could go on with these things, and even before doing so I have already managed to make it sound like teaching here is absolutely miserable, but I want the record to show that it is not. At the end of the day, it can be quite rewarding. Literally regarding the whole end of the day thing. As soon as the bell rings the kids so far have all some up to me, shook my hand, happily thanking me for being there and then proceed to get all excited about me agreeing to take pictures with them. . . much to the dismay of my tiny bladder.