"My first year teaching was a learning experience, it was eye-opening. I worked and slept. My fondest memory is of a student who was not doing very well in my one math class, and we worked hard after class for many days. After a while, the student was progressively getting better and she started getting excited about her actually learning something. I like teaching in this school. It's a small school and it's easy to get to know students. My biggest complaint of the school and the school district is that the work ethic on schoolwork is not really the best, and the support from parents is not very high. Teaching is a good career because of the many benefits we receive, like healthcare, retirement, summers off, the ease of being on the same schedule. Standardized testing is the easiest way to measure student learning, but it is not effective. Kids can just blow it off and do nothing. I would love to see the Department of Education be terminated, it should be up to the states to decide how they educate their students." - A teacher