The rewards of being me (a teacher)

Okay, the other day in the teacher's lounge a few of us teachers were talking and one made the comment that everyone always responds "oh, you're a few, that is so fun!" His reply to this is always, " yes, you can call it that as well as rewarding, hard work, etc." I just wanted to agree with his statement...teaching is very rewarding.
I have had several experiences throughout these last couple of months that have been very rewarding and I wanted to share a couple. One experience has been with my lowest reader in the class. Along with being my lowest reader he is also my lowest writer. Well this kid has a rough broken home situation, but what impresses me is that he doesn't show it behaviorally. Anyways, he has been doing so awesome the last couple of weeks in reading. This week, we started writer's workshop and have had a older lady to start coming in to help couple of my poorer writer's. Well as of the last couple of days, I've been letting my fourth graders chose their own topics to write about (we have been working on Halloween poems and such). So my low reader had no clue what to write. I encouraged him to take out the sheet of ideas that each parent filled out at the beginning of the year. Him and Mrs. Olsen, the aide helping out read over the list. A minute later I looked back at the table he was sitting at and he was busy writing. Not even 10 minutes later, he had almost filled the full page(skipping ever other word). This gave me chills. When I mentioned it to his mom, the principal, and a few other teachers I teared up every time. He finished the story and let me read it and read a bit of it to me as well. That was worth more than I can say.
Another of my poor writer's in the back table did so well the next day with our new aide being there as well. There were some that told me to be careful about having her there cause she could be old and honory, but she is the best thing that happen to these lower kids.
The other week we had back to school night and I loved being with all my parents. I have such a great group of kids and great parents as well. I loved telling them how amazing their kids were and hearing what they thought about their children from a home view. One of my mother's told me a funny story that happened in her car as her husband was telling my student and her older brother some jokes. Apparently he was telling them a canibal joke and my student, Samantha J, asked what a canibal was...And her dad answered that it is someone who eats another person. So she asked "Then why does my teacher ask us to be that in the hall..." Then her parents figured it out and explained that I mean accountable....Not a canibal. Her mom teases her now not to chew on her friend's arm as we go down the hall. ha ha ha. My principal was tokd that joke and loved it!!! She even added it to her talk in church last week. The other day that same student was trying to think of something to write a story about and I told her to write the story down :).
These are just a few of the cute moments I had that were pretty rewarding to me. Also I just started the recorder with one of my fourth grade classes and some have been staying in from recess and practicing the song they just learned. That is so fulfilling as well to feel their excitement for the things they are trying to master. I'm sure that I could go on but I'll just stop there and write more another day :)....