~you could have heard a pin drop~

 You could have heard a pin drop in our normally quite busy and sometimes noisy classroom at school as "the 22" saw their teacher shed a tear of joy for something very nice that happened to me mid-morning yesterday.  Without going into all of the particulars of what happened, we had a visitor to our room who was looking for me.  She brought with her a wonderful greeting and a heart warming message for me as a teacher.  She stayed for awhile and visited with us and then was on her way.  We went back to our whole group reading time, well at least for a few minutes, before I shut the book I was reading from and looked out at them, those little people of mine.

I could feel the tears beginning to well up in my eyes and a lump in my throat began to form.  I stopped everything, right there.  I didn't even finish the lesson because there was a much greater lesson to teach them than that which was written in "the plan" for the day.  I slowly began to join them, sitting atop an empty student desk nearby and this is what I said to them.

"Children, please listen to me.  I just want you to know something and the something is that no matter what happens to us here, whether our day is going well or going "not so" well, that your teacher loves you very much.  Each of you.  All of you.  Do you know that?  That I love you?  And you guys know what I always tell you about.  If you have a teacher who does not love you, then what are you supposed to do?"

They knew the answer to that one.  Find a new teacher!

Try as hard as I might to not let a tear escape, a couple did.  Ok, ok, I really think more than a couple ran down my face.  I told them that I think of them all the time, even when we are not together.  I go home at night and take them "with me" in my thoughts and surely in my prayers.  I told them that I hoped I was making a difference to them, that what I was trying to teach them was actually sinking in.  I looked at each of them and they all looked back at me and it was so quiet, so very still in our classroom.  One sweet little guy handed me a Kleenix and believe me when I say that was a good thing.   After a few minutes, when I had told them all that was on my mind and in my heart, we got back to school work and the day continued on.  All too soon, as is the case nearly every day we are at school, the 3:10 bell rang and it was time to go home.  

And I woke up this morning to find them still on my mind.

One of the things that I have come to learn about myself as a now "twice" retired teacher, is that finally at long last after nearly 4 decades of doing this, I know one thing for certain.

I have finally become the teacher that I was always supposed to be.

You know, I always felt that I was a good teacher before.  If I had not felt so, then I would have left the field of education long before 37 years of time had passed.  I loved being a teacher way back in 1979, the year I first began as a Title I math teacher back in my hometown of Haven, and I still love it today.  But I know that something inside of me has changed and it was a change for the "even better" and for that I most thankful.  Many people continue to ask me when I will choose to retire for the "third time" and I say to them that I don't know.  Of course I cannot go on forever but as long as I am still an effective teacher and there are students who need me, then I intend to teach for a few more years.  I have found my niche, my place here in Colorado, in a little town just up the road aways from our home here in Montrose.  They call the place "Olathe".  As for me, I call it "home" during the school day and it's a place filled with so many wonderful folks who come there every day to work with one thing in mind.

They are there to do what most benefits our children.  It's as plain and simple as that.  

I still have much to learn about being a good teacher.  As for me, the learning process is ongoing and it's my intent to keep so doing.  I have role models and mentors to follow and emulate all the way up and down each hallway at school.  Every classroom is filled with them.  How much I have learned from them all by watching and evaluating the things that they have tried within their individual classrooms.  The gift, one that I will always remain beholden for,  has been mine.

It's been so wonderful to visit classrooms all across the country in my travels as of late.  These are students from Owego, New York who were our pen pals back in the spring of 2013.  What a wonderful school in a beautiful New England village.

From the "land of long ago and far, far away".  Where it all began for me as a student and later as a first year teacher.  

Our eighth grade class in 1969 back at Haven (KS) Grade School.  Little did I know at the time that I would someday be a teacher there.