You know you are a teacher when...

You know you are a teacher when...
1. You get home and you still have that item (cheese-its, silly band, you name it) you confiscated from your student in your pocket
2. You know which kid the item came from and plan to find them and give it back
3. All your pants have either red pen marks on them or expo marker hand prints
4. Study guides and late homework assignments show up in your dreams (and they have faces and drive cars) (I will never be able to live down the night when I shook Ryan awake from his sleep and warned him to "WATCH OUT FOR THE STUDY GUIDE CARS"....Hey, at least I warned him.)
5. You have called your husband the name of your most ill-behaved student in a fit of rage
6. You have the "eyes of death" look down pat and sometimes use it outside the classroom
7. You buy shoes based on the fact that you will not want to cut your feet off at the end of 7th period because of the pain
8. You live life in terms of semesters and not years
9. You cringe when you hear the words, "Wait, we had homework last night?"
10. The Dollar Tree and the dollar bins at Target are places you are routinely found lurking in case they have something you just cannot live without in your classroom
11. You are a better handwriting detective than any FBI agent because you have many times deducted who that nameless paper belongs to.
12. You can remember the name of all 90 of your students and what period they are in and what their book number is but you cannot remember your own grocery list at the store.
13. You cry big tears of joy and your heart actually swells when your student stops and says, "Hey, we learned this last year in your class."

Number thirteen happened today and I made me think of this whole list of things that are true of people in this profession. And, no matter how many pairs of pants I ruin because I washed my expo marker in my pants pocket again, no matter how many times that kid forgets to put his name on his paper, as long as they have learned something at the end of the day...well, I guess that makes that whole list worth while...study guides included.