Delighting me

I went to the chiropractor yesterday after school.  The ladies at the front desk (who are basically my BFFs because I see them so often), asked me if I was "hanging in there."  One of them has a son who is a teacher and they talk to all the teachers who come in.  They know school is crazy town right now.  Crazy town!

I am trying to alter my expectations.  I'm trying to find that sweet spot of enough structure and enough looseness so we all survive and thrive.

And, oh yeah, grades are due on Friday so I'm doing assessments and make-up assessments and this is not the time for assessments.

Yet here we go.

Here are some things delighting me all the same:

1. My team.  I appreciate them.  Sometimes, one of us is braindead (it was me yesterday) and we wander into each other's classroom after school.  Yesterday I went into Miriam's.  She was feverishly grading tests.  "What are you doing during literacy tomorrow?" I asked.  "Just. Tell. Me. What. To. Do."

She handed over a master of a main idea Christmas around the world assignment.  Janelle came in.  I said, "I'm making copies of this.  Do you want some?"

Janelle said yes.  

I hightailed it to the work room and left a stack of warm-from-the-copier papers on Janelle's desk.

Teamwork for the win!

2.  Every day, someone in the class puts an ornament on the tree and there is a number associated with the ornament and an activity or treat associated with the number.  (My mom gave me the idea.)  Yesterday we made snowflakes.

I hung them afterward.

Some of them cut them all alone and some of them needed help.  They all needed help with the folding, but I'm fast so I zipped around folding one at a time.

When I was hanging them up, this one caught my eye:

It is pretty amazing.  You never know what hidden talents someone is going to have and that makes humans just wonderful.

3. I was grading some vocabulary assessments.  They were supposed to write the meaning of the unknown word in the sentence.  The word was scared and a student wrote this as the definition.

Why are apostrophes so hard?!?

Scared means that you're just not ready yet.  That is about the loveliest thing I've heard.  Such a kind view.  Such a hopeful view!