Following a difficult two year teaching commitment with Teach for America as a sixth-grade teacher in the Bronx, Lily Rabinoff-Goldman joined the staff of an effective, child-centered after-school program. Ex-teachers and after-school programming have a mutually beneficial relationship. Schoolteachers know how to build curriculum, discipline children, and work in teams--the cornerstones of both classroom teaching and good after-school programming. After-school programs, unconstrained by public school bureaucracies, look at children holistically and give them opportunities to expand their minds--factors that remind practitioners that they do, in fact, like children, and want to work with them in ways that enrich their lives and improve their prospects. Here the author describes her experiences with StreetSquash, the program for which she works as director of literacy projects and special programs. She shares details of how she became involved with Street Squash, describes the diversity of the program, and explains why she believes this program has helped her continue in her profession as an educator.