Ever feel stressed? Everyone does, at some point in their lives they get stressed and overwhelmed. For teachers it’s a daily occurrence. I’ve always wanted to see if a long term study has been done on the negative health effects of teaching, I know I would find it interesting. Not to stress you out, or make your incredibly stressful job seem insignificant, but the next time you just take a moment to gather your thoughts at work, or breathe… remember that a teacher doesn’t have that luxury. If I take time to think- chaos is the result. Don’t get me started on using the restroom. I do love my job, but I don’t know what I’m going to do when I finally decide to retire (years from now) and no longer need to be “on” 24 hours a day- because when you are a teacher, trust me, some kid or parent is going to amazingly appear when you are at the liquor store, airport, grocery, mental hospital, etc. and want to have a conference with you. Worse yet, some adult is going to come up and say “Remember me? I was in your first grade class!” Fortunately today I can be aware of my stress, can’t do much about it but I am aware of it.