First day back

I cannot believe that I am saying this, but it sure does feel good to be back! I didn't realize how much I grew to love the kids and how much I missed them for those two weeks. Don't get me wrong...I enjoyed the break but I missed the kids. Teaching is like a contact sport. It is definitely not impersonal. There is no way that you can be amongst all these people and not become attached to them in some way. This morning, I got numerous hugs, handshakes and smiles. It warmed my heart on a cold morning like today. By the way, it's unnaturally cold for Florida...even at this time of the year. I just looked at the weather forecast and saw that tomorrow night it will be in the 30's (Fahrenheit).
Here is why I like being back....
After I assigned the work for this morning, I entered into a conversation with one of my students. Here's how it started. A fellow teacher knows that I collect the figurines from the Red Rose tea boxes. She brings them to me and this morning, I got a Cupid and a christmas tree. I was placing them with the rest of collectibles when a student noticed. He told me that he as taken to collect historic monuments. I showed him the Taj that I had received from a friend and he asked me about the history of the building. After telling him about Shah Jahan and Mumtaz, I ended up telling him about how perfect the monument was. Then we digressed a little.... actually, we went a little back in time. The student remarked that it was really amazing how the people of the ancient cultures made buildings that were so precisely aligned and with such geometric accuracy. My little heart made a leap when I heard his comment and I thought to myself..."Here's a thinker!" I posed the question to him, "then it makes you wonder how primitive these people really were, huh?
Student: "It scares me to think of that!"
Me: "I guess it does, right? After all, we are taught to believe that we are more advanced than these people and yet, you wonder how the last stone got placed on the pyramids of Egypt, or how these people were able to fit such large bricks together without mortar (like in the Mayan and Inca pyramids) or how Stonehenge was built...and they are still standing today."
At this point, everyone was looking up and wide-eyed. It is in these moments that I know the kids are getting so much more out of school because now they begin to think. We ended up talking about discoveries and modern inventions and the same kid told me, "when you think of all the great things that were discovered, you wonder what's left to discover. Like there really isn't much." Then I told him that this is where the discoveries/inventions are more on the microscopic scale rather than macroscopic. Like in the terms of medicine and technology rather than the automobile or the toothbrush, for example. In that way, we were able to bring the conversation into science again.