My Job

I always get a little nervous on the first day of school. I decide what I'm wearing the night before and lay it out on the dresser. I get up way too early to make my lunch and make sure I have everything I need, and then I get to school where everything is already ready for the day and I sit at my desk. (This all wears off in a few months) I wonder what my kids will be like, I wonder if they'll be naughty. I wonder if they'll like me. (Kind of nerdy I know, I mean who cares if a ten year old doesn't like you?) It was all the same this year. But the first day came and went. So did the second and the third. On Friday, as I erased the white board and wrote Monday's date, I thought, "so this is what it's like to love your job". I do. It doesn't feel like a job. It feels like I am where I am supposed to be, and that is such a peaceful feeling. I'm so thankful for the Lord's provision in my life; for a job, a class full of kids that I love dearly, and for allowing me to feel at peace.

Meet "JOHN"

I'd like to introduce you to someone. We'll call him John . John is a student in my class this year. He is nine years old and looks to be in about the second grade. In fact when he came in the first day of school, I thought surely he was in the wrong classroom. Nope, he's a 4th grader. John has sloppy handwriting and writes in all capitols. He fidgets and talks and gets up out of his seat all the time. John is pencil thin, with big ears and the biggest hidden smile you've ever seen. I say hidden, because I know it's there, I've seen it. But it doesn't happen very often. It's hidden beneath a hardened face that sees foster homes and social workers on a regular basis. Hidden behind embarassement because school is just too hard for John. I didn't know John had a smile until just a couple of days ago. He asked how to spell math, so he could finish the sentence he was writing, "I hate...". I asked him what he thought it started with, and under an angry frown he wrote "M". I asked what came next and he wrote "A". And finally I said what makes a th sound like the...and he wrote "TH". I said, "John, you just wrote the word math", and I smiled at him. And under his angry frown, I spotted a hidden smile that stretched from one big ear to the other. And there was his sentence, complete with a capital and a period, I HATE MATH.