Sometimes, I don't like being a Teacher.

Another school year 'over' - we're full time around here, operating year round, so when I go back on Monday, we'll start up again - and man, am I tired.

It makes me wonder how many people actually consider the emotional turmoil that teachers can go through at the end of the year. I know I certainly didn't before I was working as one.

These are kids that I spend eight hours a day with, five days a week - tying their shoes, icing their owwies, zipping their jackets, and holding them while they wait for their mom and they're sick with a fever of 103 degrees. I do the best I can to give them the best possible start on the world. They spend about a year in my class, and then - even when they move to the next level - I still see them all day (okay, so only 7 out of eight hours), every day, because of the nature of the program that we run.

On average, I spend two years with each kid (from years 3 to 5), and then they disappear off into the world to try to make sense of it with someone else.

It isn't like high school or grade school, where you remember the teachers that made a difference; it isn't like college, where you might write a letter to an old professor to tell them thank you. This is before all of that.

Before most people can even really remember.

The truth is, I miss my kids. I miss them before they're gone - while they're asking questions about kindergarten, and I've got to pretend that I'm so happy for them when really, I want to cry. I miss them when I go on vacation, or when I'm at breakfast with my family and there's a little one blinking at me across the restaurant, or when someone I've just met asks me what I do for work.

I spend all day thinking about the errands I need to run, and what I could be doing if I had the day off, and then I come home and blog about how much I miss my kids.

Its the 'end' of the school year, and I love to watch them grow up; now it's time to send them off into the world and hope that I've given them something useful, and it's really, really hard.

It's hard every year.

I asked another teacher about this, and my dad as well, and they both gave me the same answer about why it's so hard to let them go. They said, "Because you care."

I guess best thing that could ever happen then is that it never gets easier.