"Us" Is a Pronoun too?

As I watched my students work on a Greetings and Departures word search today, I came to the startling realization that most new teachers come to in their first few days of teaching.

What if my students find out that I don't know what I'm doing? What if they realize that I'm making it all up as I go along? What if they catch on to the fact that I could care less if they find all of the phrases in that word search, because it's all just busy work, buying me some time so I can plan real lessons later?

I broke out into a sweat as I look at them working furiously to find "Take it easy!" diagonal and backwards. They don't seem to know. The jig is not up just yet.

Apparently teacher training does not come from a book, according to my friend Evelyn. Apparently you have to learn as you go along. Apparently it's full of disasters, ah-hah moments, and incidents like this:

In my earlier class, I made up worksheets on nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns. On the pronouns handout, I wanted to them read all the sentences and circle all pronouns. One sentence read as follows:
All of us are having fun at the playground, we don't want to go home!
One student circled his pronouns---we and us--- and asked me if it was correct.

"Yep, except us isn't a pronoun."

Confused was his expression.
Steadfast was my response.

"Us is a pronoun."

We went back an forth on this for about two minutes before I began doubting my position. Am I wrong? Am I stupid? What did I go to school for? It's not like I majored in grammar though, I'm a poet. Poets don't have to follow the rules! I'm in no position to teach children when I can't even follow the rules! What other pronouns are out there?! I am an unfit teacher! AHHH!

I stopped my internal rant just long enough to catch a teacher walking past the door. I told my student to hold on just a second as I ran out of the room. I asked a Thai teacher out of desperation if us was a pronoun. It was confirmed that us was indeed a pronoun, an objective personal pronoun.

Sigh.

I apologized and thanked my student for being so smart and counted the slip up as one of those reminders that teaching is not perfect and I need to brush up on simple grammar rules. I calmed down just a bit as the students continued their word search. As far as they knew, they were learning something and I was still competent.

So I kept my mouth shut and let them work.