OMG------I wish you could have seen the lunch spread that was in the teachers' lounge today. Some of the second-grade parents (who are just about to complete their final year/s at Benson, that is....unless they get some news at the special doctor's someday......LOL! Easy for the single girl to joke about, right??) provided a VAST array of yummmmmmmminess for the staff for lunch. The food was amazing and completely appreciated, but beyond that, the kindness that was demonstrated in that act really does blow my mind. It is an insanely busy time for every single one of us this time of year (teachers and parents alike) and for people to find the time to communicate and coordinate and then actually shop, bake, cook, etc???? I haven't eaten a normal meal in weeks, and I don't even have a family filling all of my time, so I just don't know how they pulled it off! OHOHOH and!!! Some of the kids made cards to decorate the table. You know me well enough to know by now that I was fighting back the emotion that tends to show in my eyeballs. If you happened to be a part of the love and lovely, please know that there was nothing but gratitude and appreciation in that lunchroom today. THANK YOU!
And at the end of the day was my big Character Counts assembly! My theme was based on the song "Hall of Fame" by the Script (but I used the Glee version). So, I did "The Hall of Fame of Kindness and Character." The assembly was held in the gym so I had a Power Point of a story that I projected on a giant screen that hangs above our stage in the gym. The book I used was called Each Kindness. It was a story of a new student in a school who the others did not treat with kindness. I'd asked all of teachers to have their students color a mini template of a person. I had them do one side green (the side that would show if we were all the same) and the other side's only requirements were to have a brain and a heart, beyond that----simply drawings of things that represent the individual artist. I did a little schpeel about the green side--how boring if we were all the same, then about the decorated side and how that's what makes us each unique. Then I read the book. I took an idea I'd read in a chain email about how, once a paper is crumpled, it can never be made the same again. I asked the kids to do a small crumple to their paper every time the kids in the story treated the little girl poorly. Once the story was over I asked the kids to try to reflatten their person. Of course they couldn't (side-note: this morning one of my boys came up to me with a wrinkled math paper and told me that he wished they made an iron for paper-----proving once again that we are at the time in the school year when the kids can read my mind!!! My class is as in the dark about the assembly as all the others, so it wasn't like he had any inkling of my idea---kind of blew my mind!) Anyhow-----then I told a story you are all probably familiar with. I like to tell it at the assembly every few years because I find it incredibly impactful. It's, again, a story I'd seen via email years ago about a special needs child who wanted to play baseball. The boy's dad asked a team he saw playing while on a walk with his son one day if his son could step in for an inning or two. The kids obliged because they were losing by several runs and the game was nearly over. Flash forward: it's the kid's at-bat, the team has rallied and tied the game and the opposing team (who would win if this kid struck out) "fumbled" in the outfield to allow the boy to hit the ball, run the bases and win the game for the team. The all-time greatest story of kindness!! Once I got them all juiced up with that great story came the big moment: I started the music and played my coordinated PowerPoint of all of the kids' pictures in the school with the song "Hall of Fame." One day last week I went to all of the classrooms and took pictures of small groups of kids. I then made a PowerPoint with one giant pic per slide along coordinated with a lyric from the song. Viola! Cuteness with a message!! Whoa! What a day!! This girl's gonna sleep WELL tonight!!
I hope you all have an amazing long weekend. I may see some of you at the parade on Monday! Fingers are crossed for good weather!!
XOXO
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