During my second semester of 8th grade, I was offered a chance to help my old afterschool program by becoming an assistant teacher. I was apprehensive at first, not sure if I really wanted to spend three hours every Friday at a place I never had enjoyed being in. However, I didn’t have any extracurriculars or volunteer experience, and I understood that this was a great chance to get a start, so I sucked it up and accepted the opportunity.

My first day was—as expected— nerve-wracking. I nearly missed the bus. When I got there I was almost swarmed by kids asking me questions and man, were there a lot of kids! I tried to remember their names to the best of my ability. However, by the next Friday, I had embarrassingly forgotten a majority of their names, silently weeping inside whenever I had to ask them again. Although, to my relief or concern, they had also forgotten my name. During those moments, I forgave every teacher who had forgotten my name.

For the next several weeks of continuous cycles of teaching them how to read and how to write, tablemates would fight amongst each other for pencils that looked slightly different. One had an eraser and one didn’t. Although I watched in confusion, I asked them why couldn’t they switch the one they had right now. They both said that they liked the other one more. Grasping what they meant, I told them to return the pencils to each other, even though the pencils didn’t belong to them. When the fighting went on for too long, I told them to give back their respective pencils, though I ended up taking them and putting them in the pencil box with the rest and giving them each a new one. When I put the pencil into their hands, both of them stared at them for a second, then scrambled to the pencil box and grabbed their old one. I watched, amused and confused.

During the childrens’ break, I had become attached to a kid from another class. He gave me hugs and offered me a sticker of an orange cat. I named it Fred and put it on the back of my phone. Every week, he would constantly ask me, “Where’s Fred?” One week, I had changed cases, though thinking ahead from the children’s strange possessiveness, I took a picture of Fred since I couldn’t take him off my old case without ripping him to shreds. The kid looked at my case, confused, and asked me “Where did Fred go?” I smiled, anticipating this, and showed him a picture on my phone. He gasped and laughed with me.

Then, there was this hothead who would get emotional very easily. I would let kids play on my phone as a prize, and they would take turns. However, anyone who joined in the middle of the game would have to wait until the current round of kids ended. The hothead asked me if he could play on my phone and I agreed, but not even ten seconds later, he walked back to me telling me that the kids wouldn’t let him play. I went to go investigate, but they had said that it wasn’t his turn yet. Turning back to him, I reassured him and told him to tell me if they said that they wouldn’t let him play, returning to my original spot. He followed and shouted at me, crawling under a table. I squatted next to him, asking what was wrong, and he repeatedly told me that it wasn’t fair. After a while, he stopped responding to me. At this moment, I thought of my parents and how I’d just lock myself in my room to cool down. I left him alone to give him space, ignoring my usual instinct of pestering until the situation was under control, only occasionally asking if he was okay.

Strangely enough, I found myself getting attached to the kids, playing along with their silly jokes and enjoying the small things in life like their drawings, relishing in their reactions when I complimented them. Originally I only had planned to be there until I had found another job, but I wanted to stay at this after school, talking to the kids without having to worry about anything other than the heavy paperwork of grading packets. I’m still definitely not the perfect teacher or the best person for the job, but I feel like these kids really changed me, hopefully for the better.