~in the hope that they would always know~

Our third grade class took a field trip yesterday.  It was my first one ever in nearly 40 years of teaching in which I took a group of students out of state.  We left our school mid morning and traveled south across the Red River and into the great state of Texas.  There we came to the place Mike and I call home now, the city of Burkburnett.

We had a good day planned ahead for us, with our first stop being the public library here in town.  When we moved here in June of 2015, the very first place Mike and I looked up was the library.  Being new in town, we were at a loss as to where everything was located.  I was reminded by my good friend Dennis from back home in Kansas of one very important thing.

"With a library card, you can do ANYTHING Peggy!", Dennis often told me.
And so we each got a library card and you know what?  
Dennis was right.  We could do anything we set our minds to.

The trip to the library was slightly different than we had originally planned.  An overnight plumbing issue had flooded the children's section of the library making it virtually impossible to follow through with our intended plans.  That didn't stop the very kind and accommodating librarian named Pam from inviting us to sit down in the only dry spot the library had to offer in order to read a story to us and talk about the summer reading program for this year.  I was so proud of the kids.  They understood the challenge that she faced and they were very quiet and respectful.  It was just like I knew they would.  It was sweet and endearing to hear their little voices reply back to her when she apologized for the mess.  Two short words, were sincerely said.

"It's ok!", they told her.
And it surely was.

From there, we headed to the new McDonald's in town and enjoyed our lunch together.  The day prior, we had all sat down in the morning to graph our individual orders onto a spread sheet of sorts.  We turned it into a mini-math lesson that would hopefully save us some time once we arrived on Friday towards the noon hour.  I was so grateful for the moms who came to help out and make sure that everyone had what they needed in order to enjoy lunch.  

Two other very special guys showed up to help kid wrangle.  It meant so much to all of the children to see those two there with them as they ate lunch.  One of them is not related by blood to any of the kids but that doesn't matter.  He claims all of them as his own because they call his wife "teacher". 

The other man is a special "poppa" to one of the 3rd grade boys.  Not only did he show up to assist during that part of the day, this man is always doing something for our school and the kids that attend there.   I can't imagine what we would do without his selfless gifts of his time, energy, and talents to our school and its students.

Thank you to both Mike and Ronnie for making the time to be with us yesterday!

We finished out the day with a fun hour of recreation down at the city park and fed the ducks some delicious dried oats.  From there, we went to the store Mike manages here in town.  He enjoyed being able to show the kids around and ask any questions that they might have.  One of the girls whispered to me "Mr. Renfro is a people person!".  I told them that it was correct.  He surely is.  As a teacher's spouse, he has learned how much of an impact that one person can make upon the lives of children.  He found it to be true in Olathe, Colorado and Petrolia, Texas. Randlett, Oklahoma has proven to be no different.  Mike has always made sure that whatever the kids needed, all the way from school supplies to snacks for the times when their little bellies are empty, would be available to them each and every day.  

Our last stop of the day was brief but one that I had promised to the kids.  We came to our house and they ran around in the backyard, ate an ice cream bar, and got drinks out of the garden hose instead of some throwaway plastic bottle.  And oh yes, they got to do one other thing.

They met Sally.

I have shared much of my life with kids over the years and this group of 9-year olds was no different.  I've told them about our dog who came all the way over the big mountain from southwestern Colorado with us when we moved to the plains of Texas two years past.  They know all about Sally and how much enjoyment she has brought to our lives.  Yesterday Sally was the backyard greeter and it didn't take the kids long to make friends, as is shown in the picture below.

I looked at the many pictures that were taken yesterday, from the time we left Big Pasture until the time we got back home.  They were very precious ones that showed the smiling faces of children and adults.  There was so much fun to be had.  Yet when I looked at this picture, I saw something different and it kind of made me sad.  I didn't cry but I sure felt like it.

They look older, more grown up, and almost ready to spread their wings to leave third grade and fly away.

Our days together are now more than quite numbered.  When we meet again on Monday morning, we will have only 13 1/2 days left in all.  I've been asking for time to slow down since at least January but to no avail.  Before we know it, the time shall come to say good-bye and I will miss them.  

A couple of days ago, we had a rough spot for a moment in our classroom.  As usual, we sat down and talked out the problem as soon it arose.  I told them that I knew things could be better and that they would be.  One little boy reminded me once again of something they have heard all the time this year.

"You wouldn't trade us for anything would you Mrs. Renfro?  Not even the best class in the whole wide world!"
And he was right!  I surely would not.

I hope and pray that I have done everything I could do for them.  
If not, it would surely not be for lack of trying.  
They have given to me far more than I could have ever offered them.  
May they always remember and know that they were valued and loved by me.

~and it all started out with a journey of 611 miles~

I was asked an interesting question about a month or two ago by someone who reads this blog regularly.  They wanted to know how it was that my blog came to go by the name of "The View From a Different Window".  How did I come up with that?  What was the meaning of it?  

The answer is quite simple and I have a 611 mile journey and a boy that I used to know to thank for it.

In early January of 2013, I accepted the friend request of a young man I knew from the "land of long ago and far, far away".  His name was Mike and I remembered him from the fact that he used to run cross country back in the same high school in Kansas that I attended in the early 1970's.  You could say that I barely knew him, only of him.  Now out of the blue, we were connected to one another through social media.

It didn't take long before I made the first journey out to meet him once again and spend some time in his part of the world, the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.  That trip was kind of crazy and it went against every safety rule that there was ever written, but I went regardless.  If my folks had been alive, I'd have been grounded forever.  After school was out on a Friday, I hopped in my car and headed on Highway 50 from my home in Hutchinson, Kansas.  I'd never been to that part of Colorado before but Mike assured me that all I had to do was to get onto 50 and head straight west. 

He was right.  That's all I had to do.
611 miles due west.

There's much more to the story than what I can explain here but trust me, the journey was one that opened my eyes to many things, the greatest of which said it was an unsafe decision on my part.  If you know western Kansas at all, then you will realize how the first 4 hours of this 11 hour saga were pretty much boring.  That's not speaking poorly against that part of the state because a good many people live there who are my dear friends.  But the truth is, there's not much.  Even eastern Colorado will give you that same sense of nothingness, just one little town after the other.  

It's by the time that you hit the city of Pueblo, Colorado and make that westerly turn towards Canon City and the mountains, that the real drive begins.  My part of the trip that dead of winter evening began in earnest about 10 p.m., long after I normally would have even been awake.  I continued to drive pushing on towards the city of Salida before finally choosing to stop at midnight to try and rest a bit.

I slept until 4:30 and found myself awake again and on the road one more time.  I wasn't far from Mike's home now and I wanted to get there soon.  In the early morning darkness I took out and headed for Monarch Mountain and the more than 11,000' pass that I would need to cross over.  As I made my way up and over on a very snow covered and icy road in the dark of winter, I knew that I probably shouldn't have tried it.  

It was too late to turn back now.

I led the procession of two from the bottom of the ascent to the mountain.   It was just me and the road grader guy following a car with Kansas plates a safe distance from behind.  He probably wondered what crazy person could have possibly been out that early in the morning on a cold and freezing winter's day.

It was me.

I made it without trouble and settled in for a nice weekend of getting reacquainted and seeing sights that I had never witnessed in my life before.   They were sights like the ones shown below.  

Cerro Summit at sunrise on a winter's morning~

The most beautiful view in the world near Ridgeway, Colorado~

The top of Monarch Mountain~

Or the ice climbers at Ouray~

I knew that first trek out to a place as foreign to me as any country in the world was probably going to send big change to my life.  I had this feeling that I was being led by the good Lord to do other things.  The 57-year old Kansas schoolteacher, the one who had lived all of her life in the same county and nearly the same town, needed to move on to other things and surely to other new places.

It was my time to get a "view from a different window".

Two years ago Mike and I left Colorado.  It was the right moment to do it but of course, a little unsettling to just wander off into the unknown.  We didn't know where we were going and had zero prospects for jobs.   We had no home picked out.  All we knew was that we were not going to remain in the mountains.  Our "new view" has taken us out of the Colorado high country and down to the Great Plains of Texas.  Here we have found many more sights to see, perhaps none yet as beautiful as the majesty of the mountains, but beautiful nonetheless.  

Everything that happened to me since that first moment of reconnecting with a young man I once I knew of has happened because of a great plan.  There were children in Colorado, Texas, and now Oklahoma who needed me to come and be their teacher.  They just didn't realize it at the time.  

Neither did I.

Looking back, it might have been easier to just stick it out and finish up life where I had known of it for well over half of a century.  After all, I had grown quite comfortable with it.  Yet an even greater plan was being laid out for me, one that would take me to fine schools in Colorado, Texas, and now Oklahoma.  

It was a plan to spend life with someone who was looking for someone just like me. 

Now nearly 4 years later, we are here.

Alive and well in northern Texas.

God has been so good to me.

 And it all started out with a journey of 611 miles.

~and so we did~

Come next Monday the calendar page shall turn over once again to the glorious month of May! Hard to imagine that the first 5 months of the year 2017 have gone by this quickly.  It's even harder to think that the 21st day of that new month will mark 4 years now that Mike and I have been married.

Honestly, I wasn't sure we would make it through the first 4 weeks.
Sad to say, but most certainly true.  That's another story.

On my classroom wall here at Big Pasture School in southern Oklahoma, I have a little area reserved that recounts the story of how it came to be that Mike and I got married.  It tells of our wedding in one of the most unusual places that a person could think of.  We decided about a month before we were going to be married that we would hold our wedding service at the school I was teaching at.  I didn't want all of the kids at Lincoln Elementary to wonder what happened to their old teacher when she didn't come back in the fall.  With plans to move to Colorado as soon as the school year ended, I thought it was right and fitting to invite them all to our wedding.  I wanted them to be witnesses to it.

And so we did.

On the last day of school at the 4 o'clock hour, they all crowded into the gymnasium and waited for their teacher to come walking in.  There must have been a couple of hundred people there, kids and adults included, who came and sat on the folding chairs leftover from the 6th graders' promotion only a half hour beforehand.  Those sweet children surrounded us on the floor, directly underneath the most romantic basketball goal we could find.  Honestly, they were so quiet that we didn't even realize they were there.  

So many of our friends helped us that day.  My good friend Sally transformed a common gymnasium/lunchroom into a pretty decent looking site for a wedding.  My teacher friends and other friends from the area provided punch, cookies, and even a cake.  It was simple and that's just the way that we wanted it to be.  By the time our good friend Buck pronounced us "husband and wife", only 20 minutes had passed.  After that, everyone enjoyed refreshments and they were on their way home.  By 5:00 the gym was empty.

I remember standing there with Mike after all had gone, realizing that my time as a Kansas school teacher was now finished.  35 years had come and then gone.  As they say, I forgot to not blink.

Sometimes I look back at the pictures that were taken that day, especially now when it gets closer to May 21st.  I smile at the thought of how happy that day was.  I taught school to the very end and as a matter of fact, by 3:30 someone reminded me that I really needed to change clothes if I intended to get married.  

And so I did.

Of all the memories that I have made in nearly 4 decades of being a teacher in Kansas, Colorado, Texas and now Oklahoma, I believe that May 21st of 2013 provided  some of the most long lasting ones.  Not everyone gets the chance to get married at school.

I'm thankful that I did.

Happy 4 years upcoming Mike Renfro~
We made it!

                                4 years younger~

                                
Plenty of good food and drink, thanks to special people who cared about us.

My good friend Kris who taught 4th grade there made this wonderful cake for us.  A young man in her class designed the top of it especially for Mike and I!

My two sweet sons escorted in a dear friend of mine who always volunteered at school.   She volunteered one more time that day to sit in as my "mom" because my own mother was already gone from this earth.

These two children were students of mine and volunteered to read the Bible verses for the day. I was so proud of them!

These two kids were the flower girl and ring bearer.  They had something in common with me.  We all had broken arms together the year prior to this one.  As a matter of fact, that sweet little girl was on broken arm number 2.  We got through it together!

Not even being homesick for Kansas could change things.  I got over it, thanks to a wonderful community called Olathe, Colorado.  4 years later, here we are!

~and in 20 years, the world will not even care~

7 years ago this upcoming month of May, I retired from being a teacher after 32 years of service to my home state of Kansas.  I walked out that last day of school with only a few things in my hand, having given away most everything else to other teachers.  My two sons met me at the door of my classroom, told their mom that she really didn't need to cry, and off I went into the unknown future.  

The unknown future lasted all of 5 and 1/2 months.  By early October that next school year, I was back at work as a teacher in the very same district that I had just retired from.  For the next 3 years I would continue on there. When Mike and I got married in 2013, I moved to Colorado with him and began my career as a teacher in the Rocky Mountains for two years.  After relocating to this part of the world in the summer of 2015, I taught for one year in Texas and now I am finishing up my first year in Oklahoma.  

Along the way in this journey, I have learned so much about myself not only as a person but a teacher as well.  Perhaps the greatest thing I have learned is this.  It took retirement for me to really become the teacher that I was meant to be all along.

Twenty years ago, I would have never dreamt of writing the post that I am writing today.  I'm not sure if I would have had the courage to do so.  Today I do.

Yesterday my class of 3rd graders, 21 strong, finished up our part of the Oklahoma state assessments in reading and math.  We've worked hard this entire school year.  There was never a moment of downtime, not a second of the day ever wasted.  Parents gave their support to me 100 percent and I'm not kidding about that.  They had my back the whole way as we worked together for the kids.  My principal taught my students every single day in a computer lab setting as we helped them get ready to be prepared for the tests of this week.  For nearly 8 weeks, the entire class stayed after school for an hour each day to work on tutorials to further prepare us to be ready.  If I had a dollar for every time I said the phrase "on the day of the test", well I could probably buy us all a steak dinner somewhere.  We took it as the serious business that it has now become, not only in Oklahoma but everywhere else in this nation as well.

As we finished our math test yesterday and I gathered up all the books to submit to the test graders, whoever they might be, I asked the kids to stop for a moment because I wanted to talk to them.  I looked at each one of them, face by face, and told them that I had something important to tell them and that I needed them to listen to me.  I told them how very proud I was of all of them and that I knew how hard they had all worked.  I reminded them that each one of us, myself included, had used the utmost of integrity in the administering and the taking of the test as well.  I knew that I could sleep last night.  

Then one of those kids reminded us all of something.  That young man pointed out the bulletin board that has been up all year long, a constant reminder to us that we are a classroom community.  He told us that we had all stuck together,  just like we were supposed to.

And I thought that I might have cried.

And so with that I just had to tell them something that I felt they needed to know.  I didn't cry yesterday but as I type these words today, I think I might just have to.

I told them that in 20 years, the world would not care or even know whether or not they passed their 3rd grade reading and math assessments.  It is true.  The world will not even care.  It is just one single test given on a random day and graded by a computer that scans the bubbles on their test booklets.  That computer won't know how hard they worked all year long or how much they have grown as students and children.  When the state results come out, whenever that is, the name of their teacher will be assigned to the scores and for better or worse, the scores shall stand.   We gave 100 percent as we took the test and I'm so very proud of them.  I know the importance of teaching to the standards and I realize full well how important it is to have kids prepared to go on to the next grade.  Yet I know one other thing too.

Every child is different and every child deserves the chance to get there on their own terms. Sometimes we just need extra time to grow and change.  No test is ever going to matter in the scheme of life.

Not in 3rd grade.

Not anywhere.

In twenty years from now, I bet the world is going to be much more thankful for 29-year old adults who stick together and take care of themselves and one another.  Somewhere out there will be another 9-year old student in the future who will be glad for a teacher who sees that they have value.  And oh yeah, what a world it would be if people left no others behind.  That's what I want my boys and girls to know.  That's what I want them to see is important.

A test score is just that.

A test score.

Life is filled with so much else that is 1,000 times more important than how well you fill in a bubble sheet when you are a 9-year old.  That's a life lesson I hope they always remember.  On the first day of school I had one desire for those students of mine.  I wanted those kids to say at the end of the year that their third grade year was the best year they ever had.  

If they can say that, then I did what I set out to do.

Way to go third graders!  Your teacher loves you and is so very proud of your accomplishments this year.

The community rock jar has been in our room all year long.  Each of them placed a rock inside the jar at the beginning of the year as a sign of being willing to belong to our 3rd grade family.  

Not only did I give one year of my life to them, they gave one year of their life to me.  We met each other half way.  I will miss them when school is out in a few weeks.

~in the land of Big Pasture~

And just like that, this 39th year of being a teacher is nearly over.

In early August, these dear people who would end up being my teaching cohorts and new found friends, would stand with me one evening and take the picture shown below.  Never in my wildest of dreams could I have realized how fast our time together would pass.  Perhaps they feel the very same way.

When Mike and I moved to Texas in the early summer of 2015, we had never heard of the community of Randlett, Oklahoma.  It was only a few miles up the interstate, across the Red River bridge from our home here in Burkburnett.  It was a little place, really not much bigger than the tiny town of Yoder back home in Kansas.  At the edge of town sat a small school, one that I thought might some day be a nice place to teach at.  Fortunately for me, this 39th year of being a teacher afforded me the chance to be the 3rd grade teacher there.  After nearly a year of learning what it is like to teach in the state of Oklahoma, the time has come for this school year all too soon to end.

It's an interesting, energetic, and very friendly group of folks that teach there with me. Each of them have given me assistance when I needed help this year and to them all, I will be always beholden.  It really takes a special person to teach in the state of Oklahoma, a place that ranks 49th in teacher pay nationwide.  In our particular instance, as is the case in lots of other districts in our state, school funding goes by two different names.

Slim and None.

Because of that, teachers in our school pick up the slack all over the place.  Many different "hats" are worn by all and the thing I learned quickly on is that people understand that.  We are our own custodians and sweep/mop our own rooms, take out our own trash, clean up around the building and that list could go on and on.  People help out wherever they are needed.  There really is no job that belongs to just one person.  We all have a hand in things.

And even though it could sometimes be difficult, one thing is for sure.
We make it work and we do it each and every single day.

I've been blessed with 21, 9 and 10-year olds who call me their teacher every day. Their families are among the most supportive that I have ever encountered.  If I need something, all I have to do is ask for it.  Without fail, this great group of parents has always provided.  To them, I do give thanks.  To realize that each day they entrust unto me, the children in my classroom, fills my heart with love. They have my back in all matters as we stick together and do everything we can on behalf of the most important people at school.

The children.

I've appreciated the chance to teach for Big Pasture this year.  In this "teacher's book of life", their names shall be forever written.  They mean the world to me.  I'll always be glad to have given a year of service to this community. Some of the most precious people in the world live right across the river in Oklahoma.

In a place they call the "Big Pasture".

I'm glad that I brought my sweet home with me to school this year.
This Jayhawker girl will always love Kansas!

~and so it was about the spring and summer~

As the seasons of our lives go, this girl is holding fast in Autumn.  Ok, ok it should probably be referred to as "late in the season" Autumn, but that doesn't even really matter.  I'm in it.  So many people I know never got the ticket to arrive here.

I did and for that I remain grateful.

I've been searching through old pictures as of late and for the life of me I don't know why.  Yet I do and each time I come across some, especially the old black and white ones, I still marvel at just how fast this thing called "life" has passed me by.  Perhaps, have you ever felt the same?

Several years back I helped my mom clean out her house before it was put up for sale.  Mom was a packrat of sorts, having grown up during the Great Depression and a time where stuff just didn't get tossed away because it appeared to have outlived its usefulness.  While down in the basement one day, I came across an old brown paper grocery bag that appeared to be pretty well spent.  I opened it up and looked inside, remembering of course my mom's admonition to always look inside of stuff before giving it a toss.  How glad I was to have actually recalled her warning, because nestled deep down was an old newspaper clipping that showed the picture of a young girl working away one Saturday morning.

And she was me.

I hadn't seen that newspaper clipping for a long time.  In fact, it had been about 30 years of a long time.  Yet as I looked at her, on bended knees shelving books at the high school library, I suddenly felt as if I was back there with her that morning in a place called Haven, Kansas.  You know when we are young, like the 16 year old shown above, we don't think much about the seasons of life.  We are perpetually in spring and summer, enjoying life and giving little thought to the consequences of the years that will follow.  

But follow they do.
At least for the most fortunate of us.

So for now I'm in Autumn and holding fast.  In this the springtime of my soon to be 62nd year, I still have much to do.  There's plenty yet to experience and I hope to find it.  Actually I've been waiting to be 62 for quite a while now and when I make it, I will rejoice.  Personally, I also think that 73 has much to offer.  If I'm still around in my 80's then  my goal shall be to reach my mother's age when she passed.  87 years of living, like my personal desire of being able to teach for 40 years, is an honorable one.  After that......  well after that I think I'll just take it one day at a time.  

Today is the 22,446th day of my life.  
It's a gift and as such, I give thanks.

~and I survived~

April 7, 2013 was a long time ago now.
4 years of a long time ago.

I always smile when I see this picture of a day when I had some high hopes of bringing a little bit of Kansas with me to the state of Colorado.  For the record, I tried.  Further for the record, it didn't really work out all that well.

I was 6 weeks away from getting married to Mike when this picture was taken.  I'd made a journey out to southwestern Colorado to bring out more of my belongings from home in south central Kansas.  Tucked into a manila envelope on the back seat were several packages of sunflower seeds.  For years I had always planted a row of them along the fence in my backyard in Hutchinson and I didn't intend to stop the practice just because I was leaving for a new home high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.  

Mike worked the soil up before I got there and so it would have seemed to be quite easy to just start poking them one by one into the ground.  You would think.

It didn't take long to figure out that this land was not going to be the same.  The mountain earth didn't feel so good running through my fingers but I didn't quit.  Happily I continued to work along the fence row adjacent to the alfalfa field until I had reached the end of the fence and my packets of seeds.  

When I arrived back in late May, I figured surely that they would all be sprouted up and standing tall to welcome me to a new life.  It was sad to see that hardly any of that massive amount of seeds that I had sown into the earth was able to make it.  In fact as I started to look, only about 20 of them had sprouted and grew at all.  Of that amount only about 12 actually made it to fruition and bloomed later on in the summer.

But hey.  
At least I had some.

It was an interesting first summer out there, one in which I learned a whole bunch about myself.  Even though I was horribly homesick and felt a dire sense of "I'm not going to make it here in this place", I held on.

And just like this Russian Mammoth sunflower,
I survived.

~and it was bound to happen~

It was bound to happen.  I just never figured it would happen during a lesson on timelines.

The last six weeks of school are basically upon us.  No way did I ever figure it would fly by this fast, yet it has.  We are working diligently every single day, knowing full well that our time together is dwindling down rather quickly.  Before we know it, the last day shall arrive.  It's a sobering thought especially since there is still much left for me to teach them.  

Today we worked on the concept of timelines.  I tried to apply a practical approach to it as I inserted a few connections for myself within my own personal one.

I started out with the usual.  1955 was added as the year I was born and 2007 was added as the year that most of them were born.  It seemed important to add the year I arrived at Big Pasture and came to be their teacher.  I wasn't sure what else to add but I need not to have worried because those 21 kids were more than willing to tell me everything that I ever told them about myself.  All this year I have been sharing stories about what life has been like for me.  I had no doubt that they listened to what I said.  I was just shocked at how much they remembered of it all.

"Don't forget to add the year you were a third grader, just like us Mrs. Renfro."
So 1963 was scribbled in.

"Hey, remember that year you hated math and started your own "I hate math club"?
Yes, as a matter of fact I did.  1965 found its place.

One sweet kid was recalling the time I told him about my brother running in a race and refusing to give up.  He reminded me that I told the class that my brother only wanted to be sure to cross the finish line, even if he was dead last, before they turned off the race clock. 

"Add that year, Mrs. Renfro!"
Hello 2004.

They will never forget the story of breaking my arm in about a gazillion pieces.  One young man was insistent that I place it onto the timeline as well.

"Mrs. Renfro, you better add that year that you tried to jump the curb on your bike and you know what happened then."
Skoosch over 2011.  2010 needs to squeeze in.

And it went on.  

I learned a lesson from those kids today and the lesson went like this.
They listen to me.  They hear every word I say.  Those 9-year olds get what I tell them and they even get what I do not.  It's been my experience to learn that they know very well how to read between the lines.  There are not many secrets that you can successfully keep from them.

They hear me even when it appears they do not.  The old memories of their teacher are somewhat interesting to them, even when a guy would think that it's the most boring tidbit of information on the planet.  

We ended up our lesson comparing the use of a personal timeline to using a timeline to document history.  Our discussion led us to a review of the cattle drives in 1870's Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas.  They had many interesting questions and among the most interesting was this.

"Mrs. Renfro, were you alive when they invented barbed wire?"

Just for the record, the answer is no.
Kids~you have to love them.

If I could go back in time and leave a message for that 17-year old girl shown above, I'd tell her that she would have an interesting life ahead of her.  She just didn't know it yet.

~and they were messages of encouragement~

This 39th year of being a teacher has flown by me at break neck speed.  I sit here tonight and type these words with the realization that sooner than later, this year shall come to a close. With only the month of April and precious few days in May left to deal with, it will soon be time to close the door and be ready to go on to the summer days ahead.

I was hoping it would go a little slower, you know?

Beginning this week and on into the 3 weeks that follow, students all over the great state of Oklahoma will take the required state assessments that are prescribed for each grade level.  For my third graders, it will be reading and math.  We've worked so very hard all year long and finished up a nearly 8 week tutorial period where the kids stayed after school each day to work even further than we already had.  I was proud of them, all of them for the effort that they put forth.  So much is expected of them at the ripe old age of 9 years old.  

Last Friday after we had finished up the official practice test that the state of Oklahoma sent out to students to use, we paused for a moment to do what I considered the most important part of all.  It had nothing to do with whether or not the reading and math selection questions were done correctly or if every bubble was bubbled in precisely.  No, it was something way more important than that.

It was to be a lesson in encouragement.

For the first 25 minutes of the morning, all of the kids moved silently and methodically to each student's desk.  While they were there, they left a message for one another in their typical third grade scrawl.  Sweet words that were meant to uplift the spirits of their friends spilled out onto the back page of the practice test booklet.  

"Do your best on the test! (hey, I rhymed!)"

"I believe in you.  You can do it!"

"You will be awesome~you got this!"

And the messages went on and on.

I watched them all with a lump in my throat.  Their intent was quite sincere and for all of the times that perhaps they haven't gotten along with one another this year (and they are kids after all so that would be considered quite normal), for that moment in time they were all on the very same team.  They were giving one another a plethora of high fives, pats on the back, and as many "you can do it"s as they could.  It was touching to be a witness to and as I watched them, I made a memory in my heart.

Tonight as you read this, would you please say a prayer for them all?  Not just for my 21 but all kids anywhere in this country who are undertaking these end of the year exams.  Pray for them to do well, that their work be done with integrity and that they give their very best.  My deepest wish and desire for them all is to just enjoy being kids and not have to grow up any quicker than they already are these days.

Let them be kids.

It makes all the sense in the world to me.

I would have never dreamt to be their teacher this year.  A year ago at this time, I never knew they existed nor did they know about me.   A plan designed by someone far wiser than I will ever profess to be, brought us all together this year.  It was one Kansas school teacher and a room full of 8 and 9-year olds.  

The good Lord knew what He was doing.  

It's a long ways from the mountains of Colorado where this picture was taken 3 years ago.  My life as a teacher has been most blessed.