Welcome Back, Ms. Kotter

*forgive the janky pic...I just like what it says.*

Hey Girls & Boys, Guys & Dolls!! I missed you!! Where were you, Ndygo? Well, I was in Venezuela on an adventure. I packed my classroom up 1 day & the next I packed a bag & got on an international flight. Literally. It was good times!! While away, since I left at the EXACT end of my school year, I had to process it there. My return home, attempting to clean my coffee table, I ran across a gift that helped me identify my lessons.

Dear Ms. Sunshyne,

I love the way you let stuff GO! because you just get attitudes from students, but at the end of the day you just don't care! That's good. Maybe you need to rub off on some other teachers (names removed) but anyway. I apologize for all the bad stuff I did before and just know that you not gonna be 4gotten next year.

Love,

Brownin

That letter did a couple of things for me. 1, it let me know that I had successfully learned a lesson from my friend & fellow teacher, Minnie. Last summer, when talking about all the isht her students throw at her she said she never got mad. I couldn't figure that out because even my younger students have found ways to get up under my skin like popcorn hulls in my teeth. ANNOYING!! It just made sense, & thank goodness for it because these children....LAWDY LAWDY LAWD!!! They were off the ((fill in the blanks here with the most ridiculous thing). Unbelievable attitudes...they stayed angry at each other & themselves, they hated everyone & everything. They were unbelievable. & I had my moments, but they never saw it & I survived. Thanks, Minnie.

The other thing it did was remind me that children take from you what they need, not what you want them to have. EVERY school year I come back to this lesson. While I would LOVE it if they went into their classrooms next year all well versed on the parts of speech & knowing how to construct good sentences & turn them into good paragraphs...that may not be what they got from me. This particular Brownin learned that you CAN shake things off. She may not start applying the lesson anytime soon, but she at least knows now that it's possible. I don't know of any school system that has a learning standard/objective for that, but for this child that particular lesson was important.

I was also reminded that when you're doing what you're supposed to do, it comes so naturally that you assume you must not be doing it well. Funny how the more I struggle at something the more effort I feel like I'm putting in & the better the end result should be. Not. I'm still working on that other lesson I learned last Summer: trust my gifts!! I am where I am supposed to be & that's a great feeling, even when things are a lot little funky.

See, Summer break is working. It's revitalizing me already, despite the fact that my Venezuelan adventure gave me the gift of an upper respiratory infection. But hey, that's what health insurance is for & I'm thankful to have it.

Stay tuned as I bore you once or thrice more with gifts left me from the students. Nobody's coming to shower any awards on brown teachers for positively affecting the lives of brown children, so....I gotta shine my own spotlight from time to time. & since this is my house, on my block, in my neighborhood... You know the drill--

Watch me move.