Did I Find the Answer to Happiness???

I can't put my finger on it, but classes have been going much better in the last couple of days. Tuesday is my hardest day, so we'll see, but I am so excited at how well my students have been behaving and how much they are learning. So the question is why???

1. I have been a lot more animated in my teaching.
2. I have been giving out praise regularly and acting what looks like "astonished" when they get it right. I say things like "wow, did you just really just get that right?"
3. I have been talking to them outside of my class as much as I can to find out what interests they have ourside of school.

I know that any teacher reading this is saying "duh", but I think that as you go on in your everyday life, it is easy to lose sight of the first days of teaching; the days of enjoying being with the children. With all these government regs, our heads are so busy being filled with what children need to learn that we forget that in the end it really doesn't matter if kids can rattle off a bunch of facts. The BIG question is, can they think for themselves, can they find the info if they need it and MOST importantly, are they excited about learning. No child will retain any of these facts after a test if they themselves weren't interested in learning it. I don't care what the Standards say!!!!! Children must come out of elementary school with a feeling of "I can and want to learn and I can work successfully with others". This, in my opinion, trumps anything and everything else.

So the question of the day is "how do we get the people making the rules understand the TRUE needs of our students?