friday

Today was a great teaching day... one of those days where you finally wake up without a stuffy nose and miraculously rested despite an impossible five hours of sleep... again.

Where you walk into your classroom somewhat prepared but more importantly excited for ten 4-year-olds to walk in the door. A day where you actually hope all ten kids will show up, instead of guiltily crossing your fingers that a certain snotty nosed child will stay home.

And it's a day where your kids feel it too! They walk in with enthusaism and announce, "I'm heeeeeeeeeere!" They hang up their backpacks and put their folders in cubbies without you saying it 78 times in a two minute period.

It's a day whene you're delighted to offer choices for breakfast-- pizza (!), cereal, or graham crackers-- instead of being annoyed at offering ten children three choices, waiting 3 to 5 seconds for a response, then 3 to 5 more for the child to predictably change his mind, ask for juice, and remind you that they still need a spork. You don't mind the wait... you even tap dance, shaking the cereal as a tambourine as you wait. After all, it took you ten minutes to decide whether to have cereal, oatmeal, apple pie, or just coffee for breakfast this morning. (And you maybe had three of the four...)

Children sing the ABC song at circle time... loudly. And today it doesn't grate your eardrums but reminds you that three weeks ago many of them didn't know the letters at all. It's a day when you stop the entire lesson to congratulate one child on recognizing his name begins with an M and to have the nine other children offer him a round of applause.

It's one of those days when a girl calls your name 47 times on the playground, "Look, Miss Shanna!" in her piercing voice and you actually look 45 times to see her just standing, smiling back at you, wanting to be reassured she was worth seeing. The other two times you were busy handing out graham crackers, tying a shoe, and kissing a bumped head. Simultaneously.

Today was a day when a little boy with autism taught nine other children the numbers 1 through 9 and two of those children later taught him how to share the playdough so they could play with him. And you rejoiced.

Today was a day that you said, "Go to the bathroom." 56 times, read 6 stories, only of of them from beginning to end, tied 11 shoe laces, wiped 15 noses, put on hand sanitizer until your hands were practically pickled, opted for giving children choices instead of being efficiently in control, rubbed small backs until breathing slowed, hopped up to give a coughing child water, rubbed his back again until the coughing eased, and stayed just a little longer than necessary by his side, hand smoothing his curls and heart willing his body to fight off the flu.

You woke the children up with a slowly crescendoing, "Everybody Dance Now!" instead of snapping on flourescent lights and you worried less about getting the cots put away on schedule and concentrated more on rallying ten Michael Jackson fans into wakefulness.

At the end of the day you hugged the walkers as they passed by, blew kisses to the car riders on their way to the parking lot, and gave each child a fist pound on his way onto the bus. And then you stood on the steps of a school build in 1925 and thought... this was a good day.