The thing about being a first-year teacher is that you make a lot of stupid mistakes. It’s completely understandable, first-year anythings make a ton of mistakes. But I always felt much worse making mistakes as a teacher because I’m affecting these kids’ future. Plus it’s a hell of a lot harder to go back and correct deeply ingrained misconceptions than it is to go back and change some cells on a spreadsheet or some grammar in a report.

Last year, when I was up way too late planning for the next day, I would always try to predict where my students would get turned around. I worked my butt off to anticipate all of their mistakes. And then came the day when kids didn’t know the difference between and angle and a side. I was flabbergasted, so I asked another teacher friend, and they were like “oh, yeah, you have…