While I am not a true-to-the-word teacher, I do spend my summer, winter, and basically any other break at my old elementary school with a group of kindergartners actually teaching them. I got offered my job by my boss when I was a senior in high school when I was doing a volunteer program.

The school that I work at was the elementary school that I went to as a child and the program that I work for is the exact program that I attended K-5th grade. Some of the teachers are even the same. My boss and one other person can still remember my first day of kindergarten and now I work with them side by side.

So, I did say I am not a real-real teacher but yet I am a teacher, what does that mean? Every day I take my group to our own room and have them choose jobs for the day, we do calendar, weather, and we sing songs to know what the days of the week and months of the year are. We spend all morning practicing our letter of the day (we go through the whole alphabet) by writing worksheets, practicing on the whiteboard and doing a letter of the day craft. We, of course, have play time, lunch, recess, and nap, after which we do a math activity. After the alphabet is over and we have done all the letters we practice colors each day and practice sight words and other things that will help further their learning when they go to kindergarten. The whole point of this program is to help the kids transition from preschool or no school, into kindergarten in a fun and easy way. See why I say I am kind of a teacher? With that being said, here are some hard truths that I thought about during a particularly hard day at work.

Don't get me wrong, I love my job and I could go on and on about my complaints but I won't. I have it better than most and I only have to do this periodically. It's the people who do this every day for a living that should be writing this because they are the real heroes and can come up with much better and lengthier complaints than me.