For twelve years, I was an elementary school teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

One hundred eighty school days each year.

Five years teaching kindergarten.

Six years teaching fourth grade.

One year teaching fifth grade.

The simple definition of teacher is one who teaches. But the reality of what it means to be a teacher is so much more. There was never one typical school day, because what I did or didn’t do in that classroom wasn’t entirely up to me. It involved my students—their participation, their preparation, their personalities. Each student brought a different set of previous experiences, a different set of learning styles, and a different set of strengths and challenges.

Teaching isn’t just demonstrating the concept of equivalent fractions, that four-eighths is exactly the same as one-half. Teaching isn’t just offering examples of how the letter g can be hard as in goat and soft as in giraffe.

Those examples are skills I was required to teach. The answer to what I taught.

How I taught is more difficult to answer. Because how I taught and the things that took up so much of my time and energy and money were not things anyone prepared me for in any teacher training class. Instead, the tools I relied on and the procedures I implemented were either things I picked up from observing other teachers or things I developed over the years. I sincerely believe I was a better teacher at the end of my career than I was at the beginning.

One hundred eighty school days. Which means there were one hundred eighty-five non-school days to think about and prepare for those one hundred eighty school days. And I filled each of those three hundred sixty-five days. Because teaching wasn’t just a job. It was an honor.

At the beginning of the school year, when I reviewed line up procedures and pointed out the locations for the trash cans (important to know, just in case someone vomits in class, the trash can is the goal), I always told my students the same thing.

“My number one job is to keep you healthy and safe.”

“Isn’t your number one job to teach us?” a child would always ask.

“Nope. Teaching is my number two job. My number one job is to keep you healthy and safe,” I said.

Healthy and safe didn’t just apply to their bodies. I meant it as a broad, all-encompassing type of healthy and safe. Safe to share their opinions. Safe to venture a guess. Safe to talk about their favorite song. Safe to tell me about hard things happening at home.

I think back to my teaching career and how much I did. Not in terms of how many students I taught or how many dry erase markers I used.

Being a teacher meant I would:

Sharpen pencils.

Take daily attendance.

Refill the antibacterial soap at the sink.

Shop for bingo prizes. My younger students and I played alphabet bingo. My older students and I played fractions bingo. States and capitals bingo. Vocabulary bingo. Prizes were small items—note pads, mini highlighters, bookmarks, and sometimes the sought-after No Spelling Homework coupon.

Buy a package of tortillas, the small corn ones, so my students could cut them up and observe firsthand that one whole tortilla was the same as two-halves, which was the same as four-fourths, and two-fourths was the same as one-half.

Input grades into the computer.

Jot down a week’s worth of journal prompts into my lesson plan book.

Send notes home regarding the multicultural feast we hosted the day before our Thanksgiving break.

Bring in boxes of tissues when the supply room at school had run out.

Mix hand soap into the tempera paint before we painted our hands to create a classroom rainbow. (A fellow kindergarten teacher taught me the trick about the soap. It makes it easier for paint to wash off hands. And clothes).

Keep a running tally of the number of school days. The hundredth day was always a big deal and worthy of a celebration.

Find a recording of the song “Tallahassee Lassie" so my fifth graders could get up and move their bodies, while practicing the spelling of Florida’s capital.

Meet with parents.

Grade papers with colored markers but not red ink.

Put up bulletin board displays.

Type up a list of class names a few weeks before Valentine’s Day, so when it was February 14, students passing out cards had one for each classmate.

Celebrate students’ birthdays. Weekend birthdays were celebrated the Friday before. Summer birthdays were celebrated in June; and whenever possible, on the same number day. (For instance, an August 20 birthday would be celebrated on June 20).

Love these children.

Love the children who didn’t always show me love back. Love the children who made me tired of hearing my own name. Love the children who forget to say thank you when I gave each student a little goodie bag for Halloween.

Love the children. Because they are children. And all children deserve to be loved and to be shown love.

That’s what I did when I was a teacher.

-Wendy Kennar

Wendy Kennar is a mother, wife, writer, and former teacher. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications and anthologies, both in print and online. You can read more from Wendy at www.wendykennar.com where she writes about books, boys, and bodies (living with an invisible disability). You can also find Wendy on Instagram @wendykennar. Wendy is currently at work on a memoir-in-essays.