My Gift

I do a lot of volunteer work at our elementary school on Fridays. I walk with the kids in the morning and then head to the library to shelve books. Then later I head to Joseph's classroom and take half the kids at a time to the library (insert "herding cats" comment here). Then I hang out with his class for a while, usually coloring or checking homework or assembling forlders. At one, I head over to Ben's class to take small groups of about 4 kids or so at a time to help them with math. (Ben is not in any of the Kids Having Trouble With Math groups, go fig!)

I haven't heard of any way to volunteer in Joshua's class yet. I'm thinking Matt and I may just have lunch with him once a week, because I am LOVING getting to know the kids in Ben's and Joseph's classes. I'd say I know a good 75% of face/name combos in Joseph's class. I'm pretty solid with most of the math kids as well. Easier to tell them apart in the later grades, because the Kindergarteners all tend to have very similar blank looks about them. But in fourth grade, you can tell the kids apart by how they react to struggling with something. There's the kids who annoys people around him (Dusty), the girl who just wants to keep trying and never stop till she gets it (Jenny), the one who scrunches up her face (Tasia). Oh, yeah, that's the other great thing about Ben's class: the names. We've got Tasia and Diamond and Destiny and at least four other names I've never heard before in my life. Joseph's class has Viggo, Samara, Soarsie (pronounce Seer-shuh, natch), Skylar.... it's nuts. If I were a teacher I'd want to send home a letter that says "Dear Parent, We TOTALLY get that your child is unique and special, but the name is just crazy over-the-top. I'll be calling your daughter 'Jane' for the remainder of the year. Deal with it."

Wow, did I ever get off topic. I merely wanted to report a neat thing that happened in the library today. Tami, the librarian, said to me "I have a message for you from Mrs. Fisher." Uh-oh. Mrs. Fisher is Joshua's teacher. What could she possibly want to relay to me through the librarian? "She said to tell you Joshua is her gift for the year! He's so bright, and sweet, and well-behaved, and you can tell when you talk to him that he really understands what you're saying!"

Well, OKAY! I'm so glad to know Josh has a teacher that really enjoys him. The best part is that Mrs. Fisher had said this to the librarian without knowing that I'm in the library once a week. Tami told her Joshua's mom is one of her volunteers, so Mrs. Fisher asked to pass the sweetness along to me. It just tickled me.

Also, Josh (brag, brag) is the envy of his class because he always get to go into the Big Kids section of chapter books at the library. Apparently Tami has to explain this to at least a couple of kids every week.

Yep, my kids are AWESOME.