The awesome skills of a kindergarten teacher

About a week ago, while starting a Friday morning with my kindergarten class, I realized what a crazy three (16?) ring circus I work in. As I attempted to begin the day with our usual morning work - word family practice or some such other thing - a hundred plus distractions came at me. A parent comes in to discuss the upcoming zoo trip and her daughter's talkative behavior. A grandma who hasn't been by in a while stops by to check in on her grandson's progress. A student comes to me with a nonexistent scratch begging for a band aid (because of course band aids ease all hurts). Another student monopolizes my time with a story about how her sister scratched her. Have you ever seen the AT & T commercials? Yea those are my kids. Ten pencils need to be sharpened, one quarter is found, 15 questions about how to do the word family work (even though I explained it 15 times already), a missing brown crayon is reported, a story from another student about how her mom bought her these adorable new clothes, three requests to use the bathroom, four requests to fill water bottles, one report of a student who didn't color his tree brown (probably the one who reported the missing brown crayon), 10 declarations of I'M DONE, and one note from the principal about a fire drill in 15 minutes. And that was only the first 20 minutes of the day. It's a crazy life and I can't believe I'm in the middle of it every day. Recently when I told someone I'm a kindergarten teacher they exclaimed "oh what fun!". Yes, it has its fun moments, but there is nothing easy about what I do. Gone are the days of playing and naps. We have state standards to fulfill and our kids have to be reading by the end of the year. Rewarding? Yes. Busy? Yes. Challenging? Yes. But never believe its all fun and games. Kindergarten is serious graduate work.