I might not have liked many of my teachers growing up.  I might not have wanted to become a teacher.  In fact, I might have expended a lot of energy trying to avoid it entirely.  The truth is, I am a teacher.  It is probably part of some cosmic karma like revenge, but I choose not to dwell on it too much.  Instead, I would like to share a little list with you.  I call it The things that make a teacher smile–and in this case, though it might apply to other teachers, it is firmly set in the ESL world:

• students with their homework done and needed very little in the way of correction
• students correctly using something you have taught them recently
• students finally using something correctly that they had been noticeably struggling with
• students using idioms, phrasal verbs, or slang correctly.
• students with gifts of chocolate for the teacher

The last one might seem a bit strange, but today, a student gave me some chocolate from Japan.  While it wasn’t a green tea kitkat, and it wasn’t my favourite, it was still pretty good and I enjoyed it at the break time.  Should I have considered it a bribe?  I suppose that is a fair question.  Should I consider this Today’s Perfect Moment?  Absolutely.