It's About Time!

It's about time that I lived up to my name: Blonde in a Book Shop. You would never know how well it fits me, because I have never actually blogged about books.

This afternoon I sat down on my bench at school, children in front of me packed up and ready to go, and I opened up the pages to a book that has touched the imaginations of children for decades, including me. Roald Dahl pulled me into many of his magical stories as a child and I love to share his books as read alouds or even a novel study.

This afternoon was one of those times that I wish I could have captured the scene for all of you to see. It was an afternoon that illustrated so perfectly why I wanted to be a teacher.

As I read about James Henry Trotter and his giant peach, I realized I had nearly hypnotized my audience. My students were all captured by the story and practically leaning forward in anticipation. At one point, I realized two little boys had made their way to my bench and were now sitting on each side of me squeezed in so they could enjoy the book with a closer view.

If you could have only heard my thoughts. "Wow!" was what I thought as I took the moment in. Tomorrow or next week when I am feeling frustrated or fatigued, I will remember that moment again! Happy reading!

"Offer"tunity

I have been thinking about this for at least a couple of days. My deep thoughts were prompted by an 8 year old in my 3rd grade class. This particular student is exceptionally bright and she has infinite stores of energy as do most of the little ones I spend each day with.

Now, I should probably preface all of this by saying that I have 16 girls and only 4 boys in my class. (If this was the situation a few years down the road, they might have been asking themselves how they could be so lucky, but right now they exist in a girl's world like visitors to the circus: they watch in awe, but are reluctant to join.) I also have learned that 8 year old girls together are not that much different than 18 or 28 year old girls together. They love to talk about their clothes and hair. They move in packs and the claws are bound to come out every now and then. And so teacher and referee enters the ring! I have had more than one conversation with this little girl about being kind and how much I expect of her because of the gifts she possesses.

Right before Christmas break, she came to me in the morning and said that she and some other students on her bus had seen me that morning near the buses. I thought that this might be the typical report of a teacher sighting, since most students are as excited to see you outside of the school building, as they might be to see a fish breathing out of water. Nevertheless, the story continued. These students had been discussing penguins when they had spotted me and decided that I was rather penguin like. As I am not black and white, it wasn't hard to figure out how they had reached this conclusion. I continued to listen to my student as she described how she jumped to my defense. In that moment I think that I politely listened to the story and thanked her for thinking of me, but in the rush of morning activities we moved on and I honestly did not give it anymore thought until a couple of days ago. When I finally did think about it, I thought about how proud I was of this little girl. She was offered an opportunity to show real maturity and rise above. She accepted the offer when it would have been so easy to skirt past that moment.

Then I went to see the movie "The Blind Side" last night with Lynda, and I watched a family be offered a chance to invest in a person. Against the odds and without the approval of others around them, they accepted a challenge to love and it made all the difference in a young person's life.

All of this got me thinking about how may times God offers me opportunities to love like Him, to invest in others, to listen to His voice. Am I paying attention? Do I hear his voice and will I accept the offer?