My mother is a substitute teacher for elementary school - she's currently completing her junior year at IUPUI and plans to find a position as an elementary school teacher when she's done. She has her heart set on 2nd grade, but she wouldn't mind having 1st, maybe even 3rd.

This past Wednesday, November 2, the underclassmen at my school were testing, meaning the seniors like myself to had to leave and do something productive. This could range from college visits to attending a senior field trip the teachers planned, or whatever worked.

I decided to job-shadow my mother.

She went to an elementary school that I went to for 1st and 2nd grade, V O Isom Central Elementary School. I was eager to attend my old school that I went to in my childhood, and I heard I might get to meet some of my old teachers there. Once I found out I was allowed to job-shadow, I was ecstatic, counting down the days until I was able to go. Needless to say, I was looking forward to the event.

Mom was subbing for Mrs. Held, a 3rd-grade class made up of 24 students.

Clearly, I was equal parts excited and dreading it. However I was more excited about it than I was afraid of it. I was more uneasy about my ability to handle a bunch of children - because I actually hate kids. I grew up with too many of them, and beneath all the small noses, squishy cheeks and tiny figures lied demonically possessed hell-children from a Disney Channel babysitting movie.

Needless to say, I was prepared to strangle an itty-bitty throat.

It was time to start the day - Mom and I were in the building an hour and a half earlier than when the kids were supposed to arrive. In that time, we clocked in, met up with a few of the other teachers, and reviewed the lesson plans Mrs. Held left for us. Thankfully, they were very detailed and thorough, making it perfect for me to study while I job shadow. Mom explained the basics of job shadowing - stay quiet, but observe carefully. She was, however, going to get me involved with a few things in regards to her lessons.

1.) In the real world, you have to walk on eggshells with your tiptoes.

During that hour and a half of prep time, Mom also talked me through specific wordings to say to the kids and things to never say to avoid them going home and having their parents twisting the context and filing complaints and lawsuits.

"Don't say 'do you get it?' say, 'do you understand it?'."

"Don't be sarcastic, even if you are trying to be funny."

"Don't talk about religion, politics, or anything personal."

"Don't ever tell them to 'shut up.'"

"Don't tell them to 'act their age,' because they're kids."

"Don't compare students to each other, nor to their siblings."

"Don't say that something is easy or hard. Everyone learns differently."

"Never announce that you're giving up or overwhelmed, it makes them upset."

Sweet Jesus, the list goes on. I never realized exactly how much they have to keep track of with just their tongue alone. This doesn't include all the motions they had to do and what they can't gesture. Being a teacher is having strict movements and spitting out the same lines to avoid problems. It's unreal. You could look at a child wrong or breathe incorrectly and a parent would threaten to sue. Apparently, Mom informed me that the rest of the world and its professions are the same way.

Seriously, you all need to chill.

After the preparations and quick trainings, we were ready to start our day. Here's a quick layout of the classroom, to give you an idea of what we were working with. That's my mother over in the corner at the teacher's desk. She was taking a few last looks at the lesson plans and figuring out how she was going to play it out in the class.

When the bell rang, kids started to sprinkle in. The schools changed the bells too, because some kids were having anxiety attacks over the classic ringing sound, so they changed the ringing to a gentle buzz. After the buzz on the announcements, there came a buzz in the hallways, children of all ages walking along and chatting amongst themselves as they would in their everyday routine.

2.) Kids revolve around routine.

Everything was routine to these kids. From their schedules to their tasks in class, to even the pattern of which they arrive into class, it was all part of the same cycle.

One.

A group of four.

Two best friends.

One, and one more following a few seconds after.

In whatever way they arrived, was how they came, and that was how they came everyday. The first child would come in, put his backpack up on his designated hanger, say hello to the teacher and proceed to take lunch tallies as if he had rehearsed the performance over and over again. The next that followed through looked as though they had picked up a conversation they left off at from the last time they saw each other, but with a new spice of life in their eyes from the night before.

The kids were more than pleased to see that they had a substitute teacher today, and most were overjoyed to find out that it was my mother who was teaching. They constantly greeted her with "Mrs. Stidham!!" in an excited voice over and over again while bouncing up and down to hug her. I remained back in the corner by the teacher's desk, observing all of this take place. Many kids took notice of me and asked Mom who I was, and she would say, "that's my daughter, she's job-shadowing me."

3.) Kids are actually hilarious.

When we thought the whole class was here, things started to get noisy. The kids were a bumbling mess of hubbub and jumping junior jamborees. Needless to say, I had the pleasure of hearing some of their conversations.

"My hands are freezing." ... "Mine are as warm as a toaster." ... "Sleeves don't have toasters, stupid."

"My dog bit my hand last night." ... "I wish mine would bite my hand."

"Who's that girl with Mrs. Stidham?" ... "I think she said she was her daughter." ... "But isn't Mrs. Stidham like, only 19?"

The things they said were killing me. I don't think I could have ever heard anything more hilarious coming out of their mouths. It took almost everything in me to keep it together while they were speaking.

When things got too loud, my Mom had to raise her voice and say some very triggering words that reminded me of when I was a first-grader.

"One, two, three! Eyes on me!"

This, in return, caused something to click within the kids; because after this was said, all of them snapped their bodies to face Mom, suddenly silent, and repeating the response in unison.

"One, two! Eyes on you!"

It was almost cult-like, and it reminded me of when my teachers used to do a series of claps to get the class's attention. I still have no idea why it would get our attention, or what type of classical conditioning was implanted into our brains to get us to react and behave this way, but I don't think I'll ever forget those series of claps from first grade in my life.

Clap! Clap! Clapclapclap!

Mom had to do this once later in the day as well, and they followed suit just as creepily as they followed suit with the chanting. It was if they were saying, "Silence is a ritual, children." I don't know why it was so funny to me, but it was.

4.) Everything is magical in the eyes of a child.

After everyone was in the classroom and taking their seats, Mom got their attention with the method I mentioned before. Once everyone was seated and quiet, Mom introduced herself, then she proceeded to say, "And in the back there is my daughter, Elena-"

She couldn't even get the rest of the sentence out before the class exploded in gasping and excited jittering. Frantically, they looked around for a student, and bombarded her when she walked in the door literally seconds later.

"Elena! Elena! Look! Mrs. Stidham brought her daughter over there, and her name is Elena too!"

"Elena, meet Elena!"

"Elena did you know there's another Elena? She's here too! She's in the back, go say hi!"

"Go to her and say, 'hi, Elena! I'm Elena!'"

Spelling my own name right now so many times is actually making me question this word's existence. But I find the fact that everything is incredible and magical and exciting to these kids is something I have to put into my everyday life. It's so precious.

The announcements came on, and all the students stood and said the Pledge, and they sat back down. They were told their lunch for the day, some general announcements, which is exactly how I remembered it, but then they were told the weather for the day, which is something completely new from when I was there. Then again, I was only there for first and second grade, after that I moved into a different apartment and changed schools as a result.

But basically, other than that, Isom Elementary had not changed.

After the announcements, we started our lessons by reading. And frankly, kids at this age for some reason hate reading.

In the library Mrs. Held had, I managed to find a copy of "Where the Red Fern Grows" by Wilson Rawls in front of my favourite story I read in 3rd grade, "Sarah, Plain and Tall" by Patricia MacLachlan. I had an internal debate, struggling to decide which book to read. I decided on "Where the Red Fern Grows," as "Sarah, Plain and Tall" was still vivid in my memory.

I returned to my little corner by the teacher's desk and opened the copy to find that it clearly had been bought from Goodwill. Annotations, highlights of all colours, scribbles and notes flooded the pages and overwhelmed me. I realized right then I wasn't going to make it through that book because of that very reason.

After some time of reading, Mom would call the kids up two at a time to check their homework and to see if their parents had signed their agendas, as it was standard by this point. If they did, they'd get a sticker in their agenda, and then another sticker to hang on the wall for completing their work.

Once it was all finished, it was time to start the lessons.

5.) Everyone has a unanimous love for space.

What better way to finish off reading and begin our lessons with...reading? We opened our books to a scientific article about stars and constellations, which these kids found to be incredible. When I explained to them about red giants, and about how some can be over 100x bigger than our sun, that became the talk of the classroom. Shortly after that, we discussed how constellations are affected in specific hemispheres and time zones (which we had to explain what time zones were, and they were blown away when I told them Japan was 12 hours ahead of us).

And yet, they couldn't stop mumbling about space. In a way, we couldn't either. The topic was space, and it was clearly a topic they were more than interested in - with question after question and remarks about how it was so cool, their heads were not in the clouds; they were instead spiraling around the galaxies.

We actually couldn't finish this discussion in time, because we had to leave for specials halfway through it. The kids had music today, and a lovely little girl with bright hair and big eyes came up to me and simply said: "We're a bad class. We get twos in all of our specials."

I had to stop myself from snorting.

In Isom, the specials classes have a ranking system and tell the teachers so they can chart their behavior, five being the highest and one being the lowest.

While I only had this class for about an hour and a half already, I knew they weren't a bad class. They were very typical and chatty, sure, but they were not bad by any means - and the kids were incredibly sweet.

6.) Kids are brutally honest. So if they compliment you, it's genuine.

My first exposure to this kindness was when one of the girls ran up to my mom with a picture that read "Mrs. Stidham is the best teacher ever!" in blue crayon. Mom collects these and keeps them, cherishing them and adoring them forever.

However, the first time it happened to me was when a smaller boy asked me, "Can we call you Miss Elena?"

"Sure," I replied.

"Yes!" he cried out, "Now we have two Misses in the class!"

As I was giggling a little from this precious moment, he then proceeded to ask me, "Miss Elena, where are you from?"

Confused, I said, "I'm from here. I'm from Greenwood. Why?"

"Oh, well, because you're pretty," he said simply. It was also funny in a way, that since he thought I was pretty I couldn't have been from Greenwood. But alas kiddo, I was raised in a little corn state just as you are.

He wasn't the only one who said this either. More than half the class told me I was pretty in some way, and it actually made me feel really good about myself. As someone who struggled with self-love and accepting my own looks for a long time (and just starting to do so with much trouble), it's comforting to know.

Side note: None of these kids knew what eyeliner was. They all thought they were eyelashes that I had drawn on. One of them even asked me why I drew it so sharp, and when I told her it was because I loved doing it, she simply replied with "That sounds cool! I wanna do that when I get older and be just like you." I was flattered.

Towards the end of the day, a little boy was talking to his classmate about me. And when she said that I was nice, he responded with, "Of course Miss Elena's nice! She's Mrs. Stidham's daughter and she's named after the best kid in our class!"

Elena was a really well-behaved student, but she was sneaky. She was the definition of a "good girls are bad girls who never get caught" kind of girl. But I caught you.

After reading, it was time to take the kids to music.Side note again: this music teacher is so talented it physically hurts me. She can play piano beautifully, her singing is breathtaking, and she can even dance. Ugh, slay me.

7.) Teachers remember you from your best feature.

While the kids were in music, this gave Mom and I a lot of free time. I took this time to catch up with some old teachers that I had or that I've seen. Mrs. Herron, my old gym teacher, didn't recognize me when I first walked in, but it was clear she was thinking about where she had seen me before. When I told her my name, that's when it clicked. She told me it was because of my eyes, and they were so unique in comparison to the rest of the students she taught.

My reading teacher, Mrs. McGuire, easily spotted me out because she remembers my reading ability. I was one of the top readers in my class, reading at a 5th- and 6th-grade level when I was in 2nd grade. In a way, that reading talent has never left me. My junior year of highschool, I was tested again and I read like a senior in college, so who knows how much I've improved since then.

Another teacher I remember was Mrs. Holcroft. I never had her, but she was right next door to my first grade teacher, Mrs. Sloop (who has since retired), so I remember her a bit. She remembered me, too, because of my "first grade face." She explained that when kids get older, sometimes their face still looks the same from first grade or the first grade face is gone entirely. She told me mine was almost gone, but there were still parts she recognized, like my eyes.

I also got back in touch with Mrs. Santos, the school counselor there. She wasn't there when I was, but I know her because of her son. I worked with Ricardo Santos a lot during my senior fall play, because he was my right hand man in the show, essentially. When I met her on opening night, Mrs. Santos told me that all the kids loved my Mom. I thought she was saying it to be nice, because Mom to me is a very different person than when she's Mrs. Stidham. However, when I saw her as Mrs. Stidham, and how all the kids loved her, I realized she wasn't kidding.

My second-grade teacher, Mrs. Neyer, still worked there, but I didn't get to see her because of an appointment she had. Just my luck.

After specials, we took them back to the classroom and continued our lessons. I turned back to reading "Where the Red Fern Grows," but eventually gave up on the book because I couldn't make it through all the annotations. Apparently, for a class that gets only twos during specials, this time they got a six, an extra bonus point for being so spectacular.

Kids, give yourselves some credit.

8.) Reading is stupidly important.

After we were finished with reading and science, we moved onto more reading, but this time with a twist. There was a program online called StoryLineOnline, which is a website where celebrities would read to kids, complete with illustrations and animations. I could see why the kids loved it.

But it got me thinking. So far, we spent more than half of our lessons reading, and it made me wonder why. Once I came to my conclusion, it made me feel stupid for even questioning why we read so much.

Because simply, reading is important.

Not because it enhances your English abilities, but it's one of the best ways to learn. Lord knows how many random things I learned from reading something as simple as a comic book, and so once you read actual novels and things along those lines, they could teach you just as much as a textbook.

Maybe, even a little bit more.

After reading, we took the kids to lunch, where they would go to recess immediately after. The weather was nice, which meant they had outdoor recess, which meant they were going to come back stinky.

While at lunch, I ate my Nutella sandwich and sour cream and onion chips that I had packed the night before, along with two leftover Reese's cups from Halloween and a coffee cake I didn't eat at breakfast.

The kids that didn't get their work done had a separate section of the table, which was dead silent so they could work while they eat. The rest were able to talk among themselves and eat, respectively.

Mom and I sat with some other teachers while we ate, and I kept getting weird feelings from behind me, where the kids sat. When I glanced back, I saw that one of the kids was flinging their food around, causing a small chaos at the cafeteria table. I started to get out of my seat.

You little s-

"Miss Elena," a girl said to me, running up with a copy of "Dork Diaries" in her hand and pointing to a word, "what does this say?"

"Hallucinations," I responded. "Do you know what that means?"

She shook her head. I explained what it was, and she gave a big smile and a quick thank you before returning to her seat, pleased with the new nugget of information she learned. When I turned back to the table, I saw that Mom was already on the case, moving the kid to the quiet table to where he lost his privilege of socializing. I turned back to where I was, and continued to eat.

Not even five minutes later, it happened again, but this time, a different kid was doing it, resulting in the same punishments and their names being written down for when Mrs. Held comes back.

Afterward, we sent the kids to recess, once again giving us more free time to just do whatever we needed to do.

When they came back, this where most of my end of teaching began to unfold - math. Thank God it was elementary math, because if it was anywhere else, they would have been out of luck.

9.) Teaching is really freaking hard. Clearly, it's a passion project - and I don't have that kind of passion.

I know to some teachers, this comes naturally, but to me, it was a challenge. Especially to elementary schoolers where you had to watch everything you say and you had to simplify your language so that they would comprehend it.

They were doing a review packet on money and telling time, but explaining this to them was so difficult. I was the type of learner that understood something the first or second time it was shown to me, but not everyone learns that way.

To some kids, it could take a dozen different ways of explaining before they finally grasped the concept well enough to utilize the information. There were those kids that understood it when I first explained it, which made my job so much easier, but then there those where I had to show them and talk them through every step more than once.

At times, I wanted to just scream, "WHY CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND THIS?!" But I knew I couldn't, and I knew it wasn't their fault. One of my good friends, Mandy, has dyslexia, and my friend Brandon has a learning disorder, making learning all this new information difficult for them. I never knew this kind of thing existed until I was a freshman in highschool, because I always did so well.

Knowing this now makes me feel bad for not being a good enough teacher to the kids that were struggling. If they still didn't understand after I explained every possible way to them, I just sent them to my Mom, who is an incredible teacher.

Patience is a virtue I don't have, and having to keep my cool despite my frustrations was extremely difficult. The fact I had frustrations says a lot anyway.

And yet, my Mom is completely fine with teaching. In fact, it makes her happy. She's so passionate about it that it blows me away. I'm a very passionate person, and I am the go-getter of things I want, always determined to achieve my goals without ever stopping to look back.

Mom and her passion for teaching made me look like I gave up years ago.

Yeah, teaching isn't for me.

After math was over, we moved on to our last lesson for the day: social studies. Due to this disaster of an election finally coming to a close, we had to learn about what voting is and why we vote.

Side note: the debates these kids have with each other are more respectful and mature than all of the presidential and vice-presidential debates put together. I'm going to elect a third grader for president, thank you very much.

10.) The effect teachers have can last a lifetime.

By the end of the day, the kids loved me as much as they loved my Mom. When Mom announced that she was going to be back at Isom on Friday to teach the Kindergarteners, the kids were immediately asking me if I was going to be with her because they wanted to see me again. It actually broke my heart when they got upset after I told them no.

One of them even came to me and said that I was the best job-shadowing substitute teacher ever, and it was so precious.

I loved these kids, I loved teaching these kids. Even if I couldn't be the best I could be, they still loved me and told me that they wanted to be just like me. When I think of Isom now, I think of the kids I taught. I don't think of my teachers. I don't think of the pizza. I don't think of that beautiful blonde girl in the red coat on the mural on the wall I always stared at in first grade. I think of these children, and I think about how they changed me.

Teachers deserve so much more than what they're given. Teachers deserve higher pay, more credit, and ten times the love they receive. I dare politicians to come down and teach these kids for a week and try to tell me they aren't as important as a doctor. I dare someone to take on a struggling class and try to convince me how easy it is.

I swear to God, if I hear someone complain about how it's not fair that teachers get all these breaks, I'm going to slap them with my shoe. Teachers deserve these breaks.

For God's sake, sometimes these breaks aren't long enough. At least give them a raise or something!

Teachers are so important, and it's about time we start treating them that way.