Chocolate Milk Rots: 10 things I learned in my first year of teaching

This past week, I finished up my first official year of teaching elementary school. The end was full of talent shows, dancing, tests, slideshows reminiscing old Halloween costumes and field trips, bribery in the form of doughnuts, and tearful goodbyes. During my first week of teaching I remember standing in front of the class, looking at my students, and thinking how hilarious it was that they thought I knew what I was doing. The last day of school as I watched my students leave, I was thinking THE SAME THING. There’s still so much to learn about teaching, but luckily I was able to come up with a list of 10 things that my first year of teaching taught me.

1. I now know the exact stench of chocolate milk if it is left unrefrigerated and stuck in someone’s desk for three weeks. Do I get worker’s compensation for having to smell that every day? Luckily I simply adore the student that was harboring away the stink bomb in the back crevice of their cubby.

2. Life is easier with personal servants. You would think that teaching would be hard because it’s like taking care of 24 twelve-year-olds all day, right? Life is actually way better when you have 24 twelve-year-olds taking care of YOU. Whenever I was teaching and my voice started to grow hoarse, a student would jump out of their chair and bring me my water bottle without me even asking. Anytime I needed a box moved to somewhere else in the school I never had to bother lifting it because most of the students were begging for the chance to carry it, and whenever I wanted a student to push me around in my rolling chair, they did.

3. Some students appreciate the classics, as shown when I asked for song requests for our class party. 

4. Being the adult is sometimes hard. Whenever I saw kids playing soccer in the classroom I would think, “Man, whoever’s in charge of them better stop that before something goes wrong.” Then I would realize: I AM THE PERSON IN CHARGE. If I didn’t know the answer to a question a student asked, I looked frantically around my class, looking for someone more educated than I. It was very early on in the school year that my students accepted that Google was their true teacher.

5. Creativity is not wasted on the young. Upon telling them my heater wasn’t working, one student told me I should simply ask my roommate to flirt with the repair man so we could get the heater fixed for free. At least one student realizes how little the teacher salary is.

6. My students are going to make great politicians. While teaching the French Revolution, I made one student the king, two students nobility, and the rest were peasants. As we role played, the comments ranged from things like,  “Too bad, you’re poor ” to students screaming at the top of their lungs, “IT IS TOTALLY NOT FAIR THAT WE HAVE TO PAY TAXES! IF WE HAVE TO THEN YOU HAVE TO AS WELL!!” I was so proud.   

7. Students are able to learn the most life applicable lessons from books. 

8. Being sick is not all bad. During February I got sick and had a substitute for a few days. I felt completely miserable, but when Emmie returned home from school she brought me a ginormous get well card made by my students, complete with notes like, “No more subs!!” and “My cat and I hope you feel better soon!!” As sick as I was feeling, it made me feel a lot better. This is probably what the sub had them work on instead of math, but whatever.

9. Students leave the best notes. My wall is covered with quips like “Miss Hardy, you’re cool because you stay up on the trends.” (Unsure how many times I did the Whip Nae Nae in class, but once was enough for one student to remark, “My eyes are burning.”) Another personal favorite was a student who thoughtfully penned, “Miss Hardy, you are like ohana to me. You are like my 23 year old daughter.” Oh, to be young. 

10. Having 24 students means you have 24 best friends. They always asked me what I did on my weekend (usually during a science lesson in an attempt to get me off topic) and they’re painfully honest (like the time my student asked, “Why does your face look like that?!”) They’re people who I could always count on to play wall ball and do art projects with me. They're the kids who all made brackets to participate in the March Madness bracket competition and howled with laughter when the team I picked to win lost during the first round. They’re kids I will love for the rest of the life, and I can’t wait to see who they become. 

And now, to end my blog the same way a student loved to end his essays:

Ta-Da, indeed.

Disneyland: An amateur's quest for the perfect churro

Some people find a sort of thrill when telling people something incredible that they’ve done. They’re excited, so they want to share. My Instagram feed is full of people cheering at Justin Bieber’s concert, sitting in airplanes flying over the ocean, and walking through the streets of a big city. I’m not sure if it’s due to my desire to be different from everyone else or the fact I’m perfectly content with my seemingly boring lifestyle, but I get a thrill from telling people things I haven’t done.  The Dark Knight? Haven’t seen it. I live in Utah? Never gone skiing. The Backstreet Boys? I didn’t listen to them until college. The responses are always part shock, part despair, part panic. EVERY. TIME.

Disneyland is the same. The last time I went to Disneyland was when I was four years old. I have few memories of the event, but my family lovingly retells the story of me begging to go on the Monorail, which instead of being an actual ride at Disneyland with twists and turns and loop de loops, is just a boring train. Instead of going on a daring adventure with Indiana Jones or through the dark at hyper speed in Space Mountain, I wanted to ride something similar to the amazing adventures of a daily commute like TRAX. The first evening my family departed Disneyland nothing could be heard over the wails of “I WANT TO RIDE THE MONORAIL!! I WANT TO RIDE THE MONORAIL!!!” I can only imagine this was one of the many times my parents pretended not to know me in public. Luckily good prevailed the next morning and we rode the monorail.

Whenever I tell people that this is essentially my only memory of Disneyland, the reaction is priceless, especially if I’m talking with an avid Disney-goer.  Once people have gotten over the shock, they try to catch me up to speed on everything I’ve missed including Dole Whips, Cars Land, and fast passes with exact statistics on exactly how many minutes they’ve waited at each ride. When Emmie suggested we go with our friend Karlee over spring break, I figured it was finally time to catch up with the rest of the world. Upon arriving at Disneyland, I soon realized Disneyland was much different than I thought.

Expensive Churros: If there’s one thing I’ve heard about Disneyland, it’s the churros. I was told that Disney was home to the most expensive churro to exist, and that I would certainly be spending a lot of money on food. My parents told me. My coworkers told me. My friends told me. I even saw it on TV! For the amount of times I was told, I figured the price was astronomical. Yeah, I would talk about how expensive a churro was too if it was $20. Or $50. Or $75. So when I got in line and they told me the churro was only $5, I laughed because I had been saving up my churro fund for years, with my own churro investment bank, with hopes to someday have a churro 401K. So instead of spending an entire year’s worth of rent on half a churro,  I bought 80 of them instead. (Don’t get me wrong, they’re still expensive. Feel free to donate to my churro foundation to help churro-less people in need.)

Waiting in Line: Another thing people always discuss about Disneyland is waiting for rides. Whenever my dad and I went to the store together and had to wait in a lengthy line he would always quip, “You’ve always wanted to go to Disneyland, right? It’s exactly like this!” After hearing I was going to Disneyland, I had multiple people in a hurried rage tell me the exact order of rides to go on first and which fast passes to get in order to wait in the smallest lines possible. So, I came to Disneyland thinking I would be waiting for HOURS for our first ride. I didn’t even take motion sickness medicine in the morning with my breakfast because I thought we would arrive at the park and have to wait for at least an hour. (Sidenote: Yeah, I take motion sickness medicine because I’m practically a grandma. If you have any other questions, feel free to meet me in between my BINGO games) Imagine my panic and all the stares from the other park goers when Emmie told me we’d be on a ride within 15 minutes of walking into the park and me shrieking, “I’M GOING TO BARF ON EVERYONE!” (Another sidenote: I totally didn’t barf on anyone. Major let down.) 

People watching: I adore people watching. I couldn’t wait to see all the parents dragging their kids on leashes and overly excited Disney fanatics and overhear bizarre conversations. You know how there are always those weirdos wearing ponchos that are perfect for people watching? It was definitely us. And it was definitely awesome.

Making Decisions: It is no secret to those close to me that I have a difficult time making certain decisions. I attribute this mostly to the fact that I enjoy doing a lot of things. I like to eat most foods, so I have a hard time picking restaurants. I had a hard time picking which rides to go on because all of them sounded good to me. (With the obvious exception of It’s a Small World—that’s one ride I could’ve recreated by myself by listening to ‘It’s a Small World’ 80 times on repeat and driving around my apartment complex while banging my head on the steering wheel) It got to the point that Karlee and Emmie told me I HAD to make decisions. This was obviously the worst moment on the trip,  narrowly beating out when we waited 30 minutes in a gas station Yermo to use the bathroom. The obvious solution was to start making poor decisions. I let them know I wanted to ride the monorail as our next attraction, and was hoping we could sleep in the car that night instead of pay for our hotel room. Immediately my decision making powers were relinquished for the entire trip and I was happy as a clam.

Dole Whip: If there are 7 billion people on this planet, how is it possible that there were 8 billion people in the line for Dole Whips at all times?! At least it gave us plenty of time to work on the lyrics to our new best-selling single. 

One thing is for sure: once our single is released, you’ll be able to purchase tickets to our concerts wherever $50 churros are sold.