Yesterday a little sweet girl from Karen's class brought me two bracelets that she had made in After School Adventures, one for me and of course one for Dolly! It really warmed my heart. I put it on and wore it the rest of the day...well most of the day.
Later on, I was having the BEST time in Kelly's kindergarten classroom. I mean I was ALL IN walking around looking at kids' writing; talking to kids about stretching out words; asking kids to read their stories to me; I was in my happy place. Then, all of a sudden I thought I heard a man's voice. At first I ignored it because, well, I was having fun with little kids. Then, I thought maybe I was having a stroke or something, so decided to just keep ignoring this voice I was hearing. And THEN, I got really concerned because the voice was saying "DO YOU NEED HELP"!! At this point I stopped what I was doing and frantically looked around, then I noticed that my apple watch said "911" on it in big bold print. I started hitting the end button but nothing was happening. The man kept saying "WHAT IS YOUR EMERGENCY"! When I realized what was happening I ran out of Kelly's room and stood in the hall. I was yelling into my watch saying "I'm fine. Hello? Can you hear me?" The voice said, "Hold on!" I'm standing there thinking, "who in the heck tells you to hold on when you're talking to 911?". So, I tried to act natural because kids were walking by me in the hallway. After a few seconds I said, "Hello? Can you hear me?" The voice said, "where sending help to your location." I said, "No! No! I'm fine. It was an accident. I'm an elementary school principal and I must have hit a button on my watch on accident. Please don't send anyone." Luckily the voice on my watch believed me and said that he would cancel the dispatch. The bracelet is now safely in Dolly's bowl where it can cause no more panic. The morale of the story is....well, there really isn't a morale except that I want you to know that I am a HOT MESS so that when you have a HOT MESS day you know that you aren't alone.
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I feel like there is a renewed energy around our school! It's so fun to see toothless grins and smiling faces. This has been a long time coming and I hope you are enjoying every minute!
We've been through a lot! This is just a little step towards "normal"! Enjoy your LONG weekend! You earned it. Wednesday morning at 7:44am I walked through the front doors of J.W. Reason. I said my obligatory "hellos" and my head was racing with all the things I needed to accomplish. The Power Hour kids were in the hall, so I was trying to smile through my mask and tell them good morning, but really I was trying to get into my office and get started with my day.
As I walked by Eli, I heard him mumble something about his sister. My mind immediately went to "great he's telling me something that his sister did and now I'm going to have to call parents and this day is going to suck!" I somewhat abruptly said "What?" And at that time his sister Bella was standing next to me, too. She was looking up at me with excitement in her eyes, so then my mind went to "oh great someone did or said something to them and they want to get that person in trouble". I was annoyed and I really didn't want to start the day like this. As all of these negative thoughts were going through my head, I was clearly not allowing myself to live in the moment because what both kids were trying to telling me, with a gleam in their eyes was that BELLA ADOPTED A POLAR BEAR FOR HER BIRTHDAY! As soon as I heard these words it was like I had been snapped back into reality. They were both so excited and so was I! I took a quick second to really be present with them in their excitement. And, I was reminded that we often create our own chaos in our minds. My anticipation of something bad almost caused me to miss the adorable moment with these cute kiddos! My experience reminded me to slow down, take a step back and see the reality of each situation before jumping to any assumptions. This definitely isn't easy to do while working in an elementary school with so much coming at all of us from a 1,000 directions, but if we can begin to work on slowing our minds down and focusing on the moment, we might find that things aren't as chaotic and crazy as we make them out to be. PS---Bella's polar bear is named Barbara :)
On Thursday, Michael sent me this video about Joe Burrow. You might remember his Heisman acceptance speech. He spoke of poverty and food insecurity in his home town in Athens county. He made an impact in only 31 seconds! She said that when she watched it she was reminded of how we all keep striving to spread love and kindness to our kids at JW.
Michael's text to me that accompanied the video said "We each have a platform to make a difference, to contribute to society. We may not have a microphone and a stage that reaches the entire country in 31 seconds, BUT, relationship by relationship, kind act after kind act, and the desire to be a shining light WILL spread and impact a greater population than you can imagine. Do not be inactive because you don't have a platform...you absolutely have a platform on some scale to use!" I know our work isn't easy, but don't forget that we have an important platform to use to make the lives of our kids so much better! |
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