Celebrating Moments of Compassion

Thank you Ruth for this opportunity (and reminder) to 

celebrate this blessing called life!

The past couple of weeks saw much struggle. Snowy days and frigid temperatures did nothing to help, but I've experienced so much compassion lately, I am humbled. 

Today I celebrate Georgia the cashier at Wegmans. She took a few minutes to chat with me. We connected on a deep & personal issue and she said to me, "I never thought I could be this happy with my life." It felt like permission to be happy no matter how life turns out. Thank you Georgia! (I'm also grateful for the kind man who offered to put my cart away after I emptied my groceries.)

I celebrate YOU...my PLN...for each of you who took the time to offer words of comfort and encouragement. I'm humbled by your support and understanding during my last few blog posts. I felt seen and heard and loved. I leaned heavily on your sentiments and I thank God for each and every one of you!

I celebrate my students, young and old(er) alike! I extended a blogging challenge to you. I offered support and help and you answered with a resounding YES! Stepping up and out of your comfort zone...that's brave and I am inspired by each and every YES. 

Finally I celebrate YOU MATTER. That's our class motto this year. We talk about, write about it and we live it everyday in our class. A few weeks ago, we got the opportunity to write about it for a book by the Look for the Good Project (A real book!!!) It was optional, but two students submitted beautiful pieces of writing. One talked about a terrible time of bullying he survived in the fourth grade. You would never know he experienced that. Here's an excerpt, "Right when I was at a breaking point, one of my classmates suddenly stood up for me, and told me that I matter and I should not care about what the bully does or says. This gave me hope..." Such wisdom from a sixth grader. We even made it onto the facebook page of the group...

Post by Look for the Good Project.

The other essay was written by one of my girls. She wrote this, "A challenging moment in my life was when I was having a really bad day. I had gotten a terrible grade and I just felt awful like 1000 rocks were falling on top of me. When I came to english Ms. Haseltine could see the tears in my eyes. She asked me if I was okay. (Which clearly I wasn’t) and I said yeah. The way she tried to bring me up was so empathetic that I felt bad I had to lie to her. When class was over I went to my locker to put my stuff away. A letter slipped out of my notebook like some magical floating paper. I read it and it was one of the most thoughtful notes I’d ever gotten. She wrote about how I was so sweet and I shouldn’t let bad thoughts control me. It made me feel like the sun rose up and I thanked her for bringing my happy, cheery self back." WOW!

I celebrate these kind and compassionate students. Today I am at #EdCamp! I can't wait to write about the experience. I've never attended one before, so I'm looking forward to the experience.