No greater call.

I began my college career as an education major. I fought my way into the Intro. to Education course at Boston University and thought I had found my calling in life. A year and a half later, I found myself in Provo, Utah fighting BYU to accept me at all. I'd lost my scholarship, and could no longer afford the BU pricetag. Oops.

By the time BYU took me, I had spent a year and a half in Taiwan, decided I was still smart, and opted for a Political Science/American Studies major. Just for fun. I thought maybe I'd be in school for a while and I might as well study something enjoyable the first time around. Then I could get down to business with a law degree or something.

Law degree never materialized. I got married right around graduation, and set to work putting my husband through school. We got pregnant - due right around his graduation. And the rest is history. No regrets either.

Except that I should have stuck with teaching. I've spent all 8 1/2 years of my marriage teaching in some form - teaching nursery, Young Women, nursery again, Primary, and now Relief Society. I got ambitious and decided that I wanted to teach my kids' preschool and have for the past 4 years. I have a dream (that's still on the backburner) of homeschooling.

Tuesday I volunteered in Anna's first-grade class. I spent most of my time out in the hall with a few, shall we say, "smart in non-academic ways" children. We worked on simple addition. They struggled. I backed up. We worked on counting by twos. I got creative, employing different strategies to assist them. They still struggled, but it was fun to see a bit of progress.

Then I came back into the classroom and assisted the kids who were completing so-called "challenge packets". Anna was doing double digit addition. It was taking her a while, so I knelt down next to her desk and taught her how to "carry the one". Three equations later and she was a pro.

Teaching is fun. I suppose I take it for granted that my kids are just plain smart. They get it from their dad, naturally. I don't have to get fancy with acrobatics or anything to get them to grasp a new concept. I need to be more grateful for that. And overlook the fact that their brains also facilitate the fact that they enjoy doing exactly the opposite of what I've asked. Two sides to every coin, I suppose.