10.

Every trip you take, every documentary you watch, every TV show you indulge in has connections to the curriculum you are teaching and you are over the top excited to share these insights with everyone in your class the next day.

9.

Sometime around the middle of August you start actually getting excited to be back in your classroom in the regular swing of things and start counting down the days until you finally can end this silly thing called summer vacation.

8.

Pretty much all of your friends just so happen to also be teachers.

7.

You find ways to weave the terms “growth mindset”, “grit”, “executive functioning”, “learning goals”, “enduring understandings”, or “big ideas” into your everyday vernacular with regular folk.

My wife has such a growth mindset, the other day we were talking about our learning goals for the weekend and she said that she wanted to try making a new recipe from scratch, and I was all like, ‘babe, that really shows some serious executive functioning skills. I’m so impressed with your grit…you are really demonstrating one of the enduring understandings of our relationship!!!’

6.

You become giddy when you meet edu-celebrities at conferences (move over Madonna or Bono…I met NANCIE ATWELL) .

5.

You actually leave parent teacher conferences feeling excited, energized, and inspired.

4.

You surprisingly like writing report cards because it reminds you how incredible your students are and how much they have grown.

3.

You experience a felt sense of excitement and wonderment whilst walking through any bookstores or office supply stores and subsequently spend way too much money on all the things.

2.

You read books, read articles, and scroll through tweets all about education when you are on your “down time”. Down time? What down time?

1.

You write top ten lists about teaching just for “fun”.