Teacher Appreciation Week

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who made Teacher Appreciation Week at New Franklin so wonderful this week. We were provided lunch every day (so DELICIOUS) with leftovers for next week even. There were cards, hugs, presents, and a joyous atmosphere this week. Sometimes in the day to day living, we feel defeated by the pressures of the curriculum, students, or politics that seem to run rampant. This week I took a breath, lifted my head up, and remembered why I do what I do.

It seemed all too appropriate to end the week with a graduation ceremony 3 years in the making. I finished my master's degree in education: curriculum and instruction with an early childhood concentration. Our speaker (a former kindergarten teacher herself) during her speech recited a popular poem entitled "All I Really need to know I learned in kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum.

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

I have heard this poem many times in the past, but hearing it last night while sitting in a cap and gown in front of hundreds of people brought a tear to my eye. I wasn't just sitting up on that stage for myself and my family - I was sitting up there for my "other 22 kids" (which coincidentally one of my student's moms was sitting three seats down from me - Congrats Cori Seilhamer! You go girl!) and for all "my other kids" that I have taught in the past or the future to come. They inspire me every day to get up, go to work, and do what is best for them: educate them and try to prepare them for the future that lies ahead. Yes, in the process, we sing a bunch of songs, dance, and read some of the BEST picture books, but we are learning, trust me....

So THANK YOU to my "other 22 kids" that keep me young, the parents who support me in the process of educating their children, and thank you for trusting me with your children. I promise to try my best not to let you down.