I'm going to regret staying up "this late" in the morning

4:45 am. That's the time my alarm goes off for the first time every morning. Eventually, I press snooze and (I'm down to only once!) fall back completely asleep for 10 more minutes. By the time 4:55 comes around I am up and out of bed and ready for my first cup of coffee. Mornings are NOT my thing, and in the past I would press the alarm until the last minute possible, roll out of bed, put my hair in a ponytail and head to work. Now, even before the sun comes up, it's a lot easier to be awake. Mostly because my kids are pretty stinkin awesome. Yeah, they still cannot line up like a fourth grade class should, but really... they aren't being on graded on that. They are being graded on their writer's notebooks, which I can see them falling in love with everyday. They are getting graded on reading comprehension, and when I ask them what they are reading and how they are feeling about it and see them get excited; I know that letting them read something NOT in a basal is the right thing to do. They are getting graded on number sense, so why not let them try their hand at Sudoku, think that they are just playing a game, and in return learn more than they ever expected. As teachers, it's a lot easier for us to roll out of bed before the sun is up in the morning when we see our kids succeeding, even if they have a long way to go. It's early in the year, but little successes and smiling kids are what should drive us as teachers... and when I come home at night, after being up since 4:55 a.m. I think back to that one kid that looked at me in the eye and said "Oh... now I get it" and remember why I chose to do this.