It snowed today

Teaching wears me out. Kids wear me out. Every single day is packed with lessons to plan, papers to grade, materials to prepare. On top of that, there are students who come in late to class, who sleep in class, who won't stop talking in class, who won't speak up in class, who think they are better than you, who are defiant, who won't do their homework, who answer back and who won't pay attention to deal with. The list could go on. On days when everything seems to go wrong, I forget why I ever started teaching in the first place. On days when things don't go right, I forget what it feels like to experience the satisfaction of teaching. I forget. And truth be told, the longer I teach, the higher the frequency of forgetting. Of late, it's been awfully frequent. I find myself trying to come up with something else to do so that I can stop teaching.

But then, it snowed today. The whole school was covered in white. At the first sound of the bell signalling a break in between the classes, the students rushed out into the snow and started a snowball fight. Just watching them play, shouting with glee and chasing one another around, competing to make the biggest snowball and the best throw,somehow, it just made sense again. And the students... well, it doesn't matter that the oldest among them is already 19. They're still kids after all. Kids may wear me out, but in the end, it will be worth it.