Notes from public school - day 111

...the greatest of these is love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

!Feliz día de San Valentín!

Do you remember going to the store, picking out a box of Valentines cards (for some reason, I remember picking out cards that had my favorite superhero, Underdog, on them with the quote, “Here I come to save the day!”), staying up late, writing one to each classmate from you,   putting an extra sentence or drawing a picture on the card of the special someone you liked in your class, and giving and receiving a bag full of Valentine’s cards and candy the next day?

I saw it today (though the Avengers have taken the place of Underdog on the cards all of these years later).

My 9 and 10 year olds love a Valentine’s Day party.

They brought bags of Doritos, bags of Takis, frosted cookies, sugar sprinkled cookies, little cupcakes, big cupcakes, more little cupcakes, and boxes and boxes of Hi C fruit punch pouches.

We worked on a secret code/secret picture Valentine’s math puzzle.

We watched Dora and the Lost City of Gold.

We had fun.

F.U.N.

Together.

A part of my job as a public school teacher is to try to build a community out of a group of individuals each year.

On this Valentine’s Day, as I walked around my classroom and passed out handfuls of chips and cookies and cupcakes and fruit punch and more cupcakes, I stopped for a moment and looked and listened to the life around me.

There were my students with the bags they had created with shape poems on them - pictures they had sketched of symbols of friendship with words around them that described the characteristics of a friend.

Basketball goals, soccer balls, Fortnite characters, singers and dancers were the symbols they came up with.

Respectful, kindness, inner beauty, personality, trustworthiness, bravery, strength and intelligence were the words they came up with.

There was Jeremiah with a picture of a cup of coffee beside a donut as his symbol of friendship, because, as he explained, “My friend and I go together like coffee and donuts, of course.”

There was Emily with a beautiful picture of an elephant she had drawn and shaded and cut out and glued onto her bag. Emily, who is my silent student who can go a whole day without saying a single word. Emily, who is my quiet genius. Emily, whose dark brown eyes lit up as with the stars of the night sky and whose smile lit up the room as each student dropped a card into her bag for her.

At recess, some students made an amazing discovery.

A patch of grass, longer bladed and darker green than the grass around it, had grown into the shape of a heart.

They picked handfuls of dandelions and outlined the heart with them, as if the grass heart was the symbol of friendship and the flowers were the words that described a friend.

Wow.

Genius in the simple.

Beauty in the plain.

Wonder in the ordinary.

All in a day in public school.