Re entry

It's always hard.  I felt like I'd prepared pretty well.  I had my lesson plans figured out (I thought I did) and I had Christmas decorations removed in favor of winter/January stuff.  I'd even cleaned my desk.

But all day yesterday I felt like, "Um...what?"

We have Monday collaborations as a third grade team and we were all suffering from the same fuzzy brains.  We had carefully planned an entire science unit together three weeks earlier at our last Monday collaboration and we were trying to decipher our notes.  We had a vocabulary assessment slated for Thursday but did any of us remember where we had put that assessment?  (Our shared Google drive could be used to hide state secrets.  It is a hot mess and hard to find anything.)

It took awhile to unravel and I'm sure Janelle's two new BYU student teachers were...impressed.

My students helped me immediately land in their realm of influence.  In the first 30 minutes of the day I had a student tell me tearfully that she had bumps on her forehead and she was scared.  Did Mrs. Davis have a chicken pox outbreak?!?  I looked her over and inspected the insides of her arms and the bumps were only near her hairline.  I tried to trouble shoot what could be causing it and we determined new shampoo.  She must be allergic.  I hugged her and assured her she was going to be OK.

Minutes later, I had a student whose eye hurt.  I told him to stop rubbing it.  "It hurts!" he yowled.  I pulled some of those individual use eye drops I keep in my bag for my own wonky eye and offered to give him eye drops.  I assured him they didn't hurt, they were just like tears.  He said yes and squeezed his eye shut tight.  I tilted back his head and pried his eye open and got maybe half a drop in.  "Ow! Ow! Ow!" he wailed.  About an hour later he asked for more eye drops.  Repeat repeat repeat all day.

Another student needed lotion for his extremely dry Utah frigid winter hands.

Another student had a paper cut and needed a bandaid.

After lunch recess, one of the girls who was wearing a floor length tulle skirt (with glitter) for reasons beyond me, came to me crying because her high heeled boots were chafing her ankles because she was wearing short socks.  I didn't know what to say to that besides, "Hmmm.  I'm sorry.  That looks like it hurts."

So we were back.

After school, I met with an intervention team to discuss a few of my struggling students.  They gave me lots of things to assess further and strategies to try and all I could think of was, "OK, but when?!?"

I left the school with knots in my stomach.

Later, as I was going to sleep last night, I remembered when I'd had them write a New Year Resolution earlier in the day.  One of the sweet girls (she hugs me every day before she goes home) brought me her resolution.  It was to read The Book of Mormon.  She explained that when she is twelve she will be able to go to the temple and she "needs to be ready."

I told her it was a great goal and I wanted to read The Book of Mormon this year too.  I said, "I've read it before, but I am going to read it again."

She said, "This is my first time."

I feel fortunate to be entrusted with these precious kids for several hours every day.  I'll keep going; I'll keep trying.