~and it was for the kids~

And the good Lord has blessed me.

I got to spend the entire day at school, doing a job that I love more than any other.  Being a teacher is an honorable thing, a profession I would not have chosen at first but one that I was destined to be a part of.  I got to my classroom before 6 and left nearly 10 1/2 hours later as the last of the tutorial students was picked up.  I was tired and ready for the day to be done, but as is always the case there is nothing else that I would rather be doing with my life.

Yes, I would say that I have been quite blessed.

Yesterday at school, I received a most beautiful gift from a young man, who just like the rest of his classmates, has a piece of my heart.  He told me that he wanted me to have a new billfold and that he had made one just for me.  That young man was so proud of it and I will be the first to tell you that I had much admiration for the job that he did.  It's quite a special thing to me to receive a gift that could never be purchased in the purse/wallet aisle at Walmart.  It was a present given from his hands to mine and it meant the world to me.  

I intend to use it and do so often.
It was his labor of love for a teacher who thinks he is a pretty neat kid.

In all the many things that teachers face and continue to have on their plates these days, it's really actually nice to stop and pause for a moment every once in a while.  And in that brief instant, it's rewarding to remember why I got into this business in the first place now nearly 40 years ago.  

It wasn't for money or fame, that's for sure.   It was for something far greater than anything else to me in my life.
It was for the kids.

And the good Lord has blessed me.

Once I was a kid too.  Jack and Janet was the very first book I learned to read.  I'm thankful for my first grade teacher who worked with a shy little girl as she began to pick up this idea of the printed word.