When I first entered the teaching profession, I remember hearing one very old joke: “What are the three best reasons for being a teacher? June. July. August.” Badum ching.

Yes. Yes. I know I technically teachers are contracted to work only 180 days or so throughout a year, but let me tell you, not all of the remaining 145 days will you find me laying around on my butt at home hanging out. I have spent many a summer, a spring break, a weekend, a day off and even taken a sick day, just to get caught up on work, attend a workshop, teach at a workshop, take a class and create materials I will be using to teach.

I have heard from many teachers about the fun Saturday nights spent at home with a stack of papers to grade or lessons to plans, or re-plan, due to changes in the schedule or due to a last minute change in an evaluator’s schedule. So for those of you who think being a teacher is simply glorified baby-sitting, I’ve got news for you - I did not get three degrees to sit a bunch of teens.

I am a teacher who wants to be in that classroom, who wants to work with this group of kids I proudly will claim (and I mean all of them - the good ones and the ones who learn the hard way), who will spend the time making sure that lesson is perfect, who will spend the time revising the next lesson to make-up for the flop of a lesson that occurred on a particular day and who is one who will brag about her kids - current and former, because they are, were and always will be - my kids.